Choose Your God

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright.

Whatever it is that you say I must have in addition to God, that thing will turn around and mock you when you don't have it. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see yourself in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Free Yourself, Be Yourself. 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. Well, welcome everybody to our final segment in the Free Yourself, Be Yourself series. We in our final meeting together, I want to talk about something that will give me an opportunity really to share very personally. A lot of times people will just say to me, you know, I've heard all your teaching about this, but can you tell me just a little bit more about how did God actually change you? In other words, what's your testimony? And I'm going to share some things in this session just that are personal.

I think they're fun, but they're also very holy. And they're not somebody else's story. It's just my story. And so I like to share some of it. But I want to share my testimony today about healing from so much shame in light of one of the most revelatory prophetic scriptures I've ever seen. It is in Jeremiah 10, 14, the second part of that verse where in one of the many places where the prophets are speaking about idolatry and about the foolishness of idolatry.

This is what caught my attention. Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false and there is no breath in them. Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols.

And I thought a long time about what that meant. How could an idol, which the Bible says is powerless, end up shaming you? It would seem that something that doesn't have power couldn't shame you. So how could it be that every goldsmith that makes idols is then shamed by the idol? Let me start by saying this about idolatry.

Idolatry, biblically speaking, is not really so much the substitution of something for God as it is the addition of something to God. It's interesting, sometimes look back at it, even in the story when the people of God make the golden calf while Moses is up on the mountain and Aaron is overseeing things. And they all throw their gold jewelry in and they make a calf. And Moses comes down and says, what's happened here? And they say, well, we threw in our gold and out came this calf.

That's what they say. And when they're throwing all of that and they're having this big festival, it's so interesting to me. It says this was during a festival to the Lord. It was a festival to Yahweh. Idolatry is not really where you say, I don't believe in God anymore. It's where you say God is there.

But I also, in addition to God, if I'm going to really have peace and security, then I also need this. I think that one of the things that shame does is it seeks to cause us to make idols, put those idols on the shelf. And then those idols, in turn, are empowered to shame us all the more. So let's just take, for example, one of the things I'm going to confess has been one of my own idols in my life. And you've heard me talk about this before, but I just would start out by saying this. The whole idea of approval or popularity or, you know, having people like you, which is one that as an idol, I've had to destroy. And but let's just put it this way.

OK, how could this work? Let's let's imagine for a moment that I make an idol called approval. I need people's approval and I make up this idol. I'm not physically I'm not carving it out of wood or making it out of iron or gold or something, but in my mind, I've erected an idol that says that in addition to God, I also need to have others approval if I'm really going to feel secure, if I'm really going to feel OK about myself, if I'm going to be at peace, I need to have that. So now that becomes an idol. And let's imagine that I have that idol called approval. And then I preach a sermon on a Sunday morning. And as I as I as people are walking out of church, there are 500 people that come out and say that blessed my life. That was really blessing.

Thank you so much for preparing that and for sharing that message. And then two days later, I get one piece of mail of somebody that was critical of the message pointing out some point that was inaccurate or some little thing like that. And and now if the idol says that you need to have everybody's approval, what happens is my mind now gets set upon the one criticism because you don't have that approval. And in other words, what happens is the idol of approval that sits up on a shelf and looks down at me every time I don't get approval, it mocks me. And says, look, you said you got to have approval if you're going to be secure and at peace in this world. And you didn't get approval right there.

You didn't get approval. So now don't you feel even more ashamed? So whatever your idol is, when you make it and you put it on the shelf, so to speak, you also by the very fact that you made it and erected it onto the shelf, you have empowered that idol to turn around and mock you. It's a paradox. It's an irony. It is something that is so, so prevalent and we would never imagine it. But that's what Jeremiah is saying is every goldsmith is mocked by his own idols.

That's what happens. Whatever it is that you say I must have in addition to God, that thing will turn around and mock you when you don't have it. So in my life, I don't know what yours might be, but I grew up the youngest of three boys.

And as I look back, if I were to categorize these idols, I would say they pretty much summed up in my life as looking good, sounding smart and being liked. I found out early on as the youngest of three boys that I was never going to be as smart as my oldest brother. And I was never going to be as strong as my middle brother. But what you could have if you're the baby of the family is you could be cute. Cute can get you things in this world.

Some of you guys, anybody else, the baby in the family? Some of the cute people and cute can get you extra cookies. It can help you stay up later. Cute can get you into places. And so I just realized early on that people would say, David, look how he's so smart and he's such a good swimmer. And they look at Mark and they say he's so strong.

He's such a good football player. And they look at me and say, look at him. He is so cute. And so somewhere I began to get this idea in my mind that I should at all times, you know, look good and look cute.

And this is a way to, you know, win favor with people. And I didn't realize it, but, you know, when you grow up with that and at some point you start realizing, hey, that's a lot of pressure to be under to always have to be the cute baby of the family. Sometimes you don't feel cute. Sometimes you aren't cute. Sometimes you don't need to be cute. It was like an idol in my life.

I need to always be looking good. It didn't really bother me. It would always bother me if you didn't have on the right clothes or I felt like I was out of place in a certain setting or something like that. It would really bother me.

It wouldn't look right. That was one of my idols. But also an idol, I think, in my life was sounding smart. I grew up in a family in which everybody valued, I think, the intellect. My dad was a smart man and he was a newsman and he'd come to the dinner table and they'd be talking about current events and I didn't know what they were talking about.

I was a baby. I didn't even know what they were talking about, but it sounded smart to me. And people tended to make good grades in my family and we valued sounding smart with people. This is the interesting thing. Honestly, it wasn't that I felt like I had to be smart, but I did want to sound smart to people and I never wanted to say something dumb. How ironic that I would end up spending so much of my life speaking in front of people, often saying things that come across sounding kind of dumb. But anyway, this was really sort of an idol.

Being cute, sounding smart, and as I've already mentioned, the idea of being liked. And I'll tell you one thing. If it's an idol in anybody's life that need approval, it's a bad thing. But for a pastor, this is especially bad because it is so hard to even get two or three people to really approve of what you're doing or who you are. But to try to get hundreds of people to approve, it is exhausting.

And the pressure is always on. You're always saying, what can I do? What can I do to get you to like me? What can I do to make you approve of this? So these things are like idols in my life.

Those are my big three. And well, God has a way, when He loves you a lot, of stripping you of your idols. I would just say to you that one of the most wonderful things that the Lord could ever do would be to help you see your idols and then help you destroy them. Without it, we'll never rise to our God-given potential. With it, we can let go of the past and move forward confidently under the favor of God. If you'd like to replace every curse with blessing in your life, and if you'd like to learn how to speak life and empower the people you love, contact us today to get Pastor Alan Wright's new book, The Power to Bless. We have a very special offer this month. When you make your gift of $40 or more to Alan Wright Ministries, we'll send you two copies of the beautiful hardcover book, one for you and one for you to share as a gift. As an added expression of our gratitude for your generous gift, we'll also include a DVD with two important video teachings with additional content on blessing from Pastor Alan. Your gifts and only your gifts make this ministry possible. So please partner with us to help us reach thousands of people every day with the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ. And when you do, you'll become empowered to change the world God's way by the power of blessing.

As the year draws to a close, your gifts matter more than ever. In this final month of the year, your partnership is pivotal for this ministry. Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today is the final day we're offering this special product. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing. It's free and just a click away at PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. And the good news is since idols are pretty much man-made, we make them ourselves, we can destroy them. When we see them for not only how worthless they are, but we also see that they're mocking us. Don't let anything in your life that you made up turn around and mock you for not doing what it says you ought to do.

This is the power that idols have when actually they're empty and worthless. So there are many ways that God can deal with you, but this is one of the things God did in my life, and it turned out to be a big part of my testimony. In 1993, I was pastoring my nice Presbyterian church, and I was minding my own business, and we had a nice evangelical ministry, and our church was growing. It was growing kind of slowly, but it was growing, and the people were nice, and we had a nice home, and I had a nice wife, and we had a nice church, and we had a nice city we were in, and we had nice people that were around us. And my mom called, and she wanted us to come and go to a revival meeting at her much more Pentecostal church than I had ever been accustomed to, and she said, Please come. We got this revivalist. He's here, and she said, It's incredible.

Pentecost is breaking out. I was very scared of her church, and I said, Mom, I said, I would like to come on Wednesday night. I said, But I can't. We have an ice cream social at the church. We just can't come. And she said, Well, come the next night. I said, I'm sure that that night we might be having another social.

Anyway, I kept putting her off. She kept saying, You must come. So finally, my wife and I went in 1993.

We went to her much more Pentecostal church, and when we got there, it was absolutely amazing to me. People were so full of joy. There was so much joy. There really was authentic joy in this room like I had never seen.

It wasn't the way that I was used to worshipping. The music was loud. It was vibrant. It was going. People were lifting their hands and all of that, but what I observed was that these people are really, truly filled with the joy of the Lord, and the evangelist who was there, he would pray for people, and when he would lay hands on them, oftentimes the people would fall over, and I was like, That is way too creepy for me, and I'm like, But it looked like the people, when they got up, it looked like they were happy. It looked like maybe good things were happening. And so I said to each his own, and we enjoyed the evening of the ministry, and I thought, You know, this is good. Not for my regular taste, but this is good for now, and we were getting ready to leave. Long meeting.

Long meeting. And right as we were getting ready to leave, the evangelist says, I understand there's a Presbyterian pastor in the house. Now, this was not a supernatural word of knowledge. This was because, actually, my mom had gone and told him, My son needs prayer, and so the Presbyterian pastor, I was, of course, the only Presbyterian pastor, and I will tell you one thing. This really delighted this group of Pentecostals that any Presbyterian was in their midst whatsoever, and they're like, Come on up here.

Well, there was no alternative except to go up there, and my wife and I went up there for prayer, and, y'all, I was actually just thinking, You know, Okay, if I could just, you know, take this and then get out of here. This has been okay so far, and what actually happened was when he laid hands on us, he prayed for us, he looked in my eyes, and I did. I saw in this man's eyes, he later became one of my dearest friends, and he looked in my eyes, and this was honestly the look that I... This is what, you know, you can communicate a lot with your eyes, and this was the look that I felt like that he was giving me was, This isn't going to hurt a bit. You know, it was like that, and so he laid hands on me, and, y'all, all I can say is, I've never experienced this before, but it was a touch from the Lord.

I knew it was as soon as I was touched. I mean, this was just the anointing that was on this young man's life, and I was filled with all kinds of fresh joy and peace and revitalizing. It was God's presence in me, and so it was good, and we decided we were going to go back, and he would always have people come up and give their testimonies afterwards, and I just knew he's going to call me up and give a testimony. The president and pastor gets touched by the Lord at a Pentecostal meeting, and so I knew he was going to call me up, and so I was doing what, you know, I'll always do. I was rehearsing a little bit in my mind what I would say so I could sound smart when he got me up there, and I wanted to tell all of these Pentecostals.

I wanted them to know it's not about the manifestations. It is about the character change, and I want you to know that I've been experiencing the fruit of the Spirit in some new ways, that this really has been a wonderful touch from the Lord, but let's not be distracted. I was thinking about all these things I was going to say, you know, and so he brought me up there to give my testimony, and I, again, you know, I just hope anybody listening to this, you don't think less of me for this because all I'm saying is this was my testimony, but this is what happened. He got up there, and he said, Brother Presbyterian, he said, Brother Presbyterian pastor, he said, what happened to you the other night? And he put the microphone in front of my mouth, and you all, I'm just going to have to tell you, this is what happened, and I later realized it's biblical.

It happened in the Bible. I don't know why God did this, but this is what happened to me. I could not speak. I was struck dumb, and it wasn't because I didn't have something to say. It was because my mouth was shut. I felt, all I can say is I felt like the glory of God all on me, and I went, uh, uh, so much for idol number one sounding smart, huh, you know?

Idol number two, rather, sounding smart, and I tried for a long time to say anything, and then I couldn't say anything, and this is what it was. He just said, oh, well, that sounds great, Brother Presbyterian. Anything else, and everybody was just enjoying this immensely, and then he finally just, you know, took the microphone away, and he prayed, and he just blessed me or something. He said, well, just be filled with the Spirit or something like that. Well, then what happened? Then what happened was even worse. I fell over onto the ground, and I began just crying, and I cried for a long time, and then I stopped crying, and I started laughing, and then I started just shaking, and I'm just, there I am, Presbyterian pastor lying up there with this happening to me, and the first thought that went through my mind was, oh, no, my congregation's going to find out.

It's not very far away from here. I've got a nice ministry, and it's doomed now. That was the first thing within my mind, but then there was something that just happened to me, and this is the point of the story. I had an encounter with Jesus, and I just, I knew the presence of Jesus in a way that I can't describe. In fact, there are parts of this meeting with Jesus that were so personal to me, I've never talked to anybody about them.

He told me very personal things, very personal things, and what I realized was that maybe for the first time in my life, I didn't care who was watching. I didn't care that there were about 1,200 people in that room that night, and I was looking like a fool, and I was like, I didn't care. I did not care because the encounter of the living Lord Jesus was so far more precious to me than anything else.

I didn't care, and I caught myself saying, just in your spirit, have you ever had something that's like, you're not necessarily saying it with your mouth, and I was unconscious to all this. I just said, I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care.

I bet you I said that a thousand times lying on that floor. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care what they think of me.

I don't care. What really was happening was that idol called approval was coming crashing down. I was saying, if I am accepted by you, Jesus, that's good enough for me.

All in one fell swoop, and one evening, the looking good, the sounding smart, and worrying about others' approval it all came tumbling down. The answer, you see, for me, if I had an idol of approval, the answer was not getting more approval. The answer was discovering that I've already been approved in Jesus Christ, and that's the gospel. Hallen Wright, today's good news message, Choose Your God, in the series, Free Yourself, Be Yourself, coming in for a close here. Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio with a parting good news thought today. Stick with us. Ever feel like something's holding you back, as if you lack an important key that could change everything?

Is there someone you love who seems stuck? You'd like to help them, but how? What's missing might be the timeless power of blessing. We all need a positive, faith-filled vision spoken over our lives. Without it, we'll never rise to our God-given potential.

With it, we can let go of the past and move forward confidently under the favor of God. If you'd like to replace every curse with blessing in your life, and if you'd like to learn how to speak life and empower the people you love, contact us today to get Pastor Alan Wright's new book, The Power to Bless. We have a very special offer this month. When you make your gift of $40 or more to Allen Wright Ministries, we'll send you two copies of the beautiful hardcover book, one for you and one for you to share as a gift. As an added expression of our gratitude for your generous gift, we'll also include a DVD with two important video teachings with additional content on blessing from Pastor Alan. Your gifts, and only your gifts, make this ministry possible. So please partner with us to help us reach thousands of people every day with the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ. And when you do, you'll become empowered to change the world God's way by the power of blessing.

As the year draws to a close, your gifts matter more than ever. In this final month of the year, your partnership is pivotal for this ministry. Call us at 877-544-4860, or come to our website, pastorallen.org.

Today is the final day we're offering this special product. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Allen Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Allen Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at pastorallen.org. Back now with Pastor Alan in the studio, and boy, that really sums it up if you want freedom, if you want to be yourself and who God created you to be. This is a great way to conclude. You have the right and the authority to destroy your idols because you were the one that built the idol. I always took comfort in that, Daniel. If I was the one through my own thoughts that erected the idol in my heart, then I'm the one who can easily take it down. You can this very day have the Holy Spirit show you, hey, this has become an idol to me, and you can renounce it and say, you know what?

That's not the truth. The truth is in the gospel, and I renounce that idol, and it's amazing how quickly. I can't think of anything more dramatic that could change a marriage, change your life, change your parenting, change your whole outlook towards the future than to crush an idol and let Jesus have his rightful place. The idol wants to shame you, but Jesus came to take the shame off you. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.