Hardening of the Oughteries [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. You are accepted not because of your behaviors, but you're accepted because of the behavior of Jesus Christ. And what you have received by faith through grace is a free and utter gift from God.

And it's not earned even by reading your Bible a lot or by witnessing to others as important as all of that is. 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 could 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. Interesting title that we've given to it, hardening of the arteries. Not the arteries, but the arteries. I took that from another friend who had given a chapter of his book that title. And it really caught my attention about all the ought to's that we have in life. And we're going to talk today in this segment about some of the ought to's that show up in religion. Unfortunately, the two biggest dispensers of shame are families and religions. And so for everybody that's joined us by video, maybe you're participating in a small group or maybe you're just watching these for your own personal growth, we welcome you. And a special invitation to anyone who has given up on church but hadn't given up on God because maybe you have felt some religious shame in your life.

And I'm going to be addressing all of that and the answer to the hardening of the arteries. I wish you could meet my daughter Abigail. She is growing up fast, but ever since she was a little girl, she knew what she wanted. And she's always been that way. She's still that way. She's decisive. She's insistent. She knows what she wants. And when she was a little girl, unfortunately, we had let her get the taste of French fries at too early of an age.

I think we fought it off with Bennett and he was coming along. And by the time we got to Abby, just inertia took over and just French fries were being eaten. And she liked French fries and she wanted to eat French fries. She'd have been happy to just eat French fries. And so we'd have to keep the French fries from her when she was two and three years old.

I can't remember exactly how old she was, but she didn't have you know, a full vocabulary. So she's two to three years old and we're in a restaurant and she said, I want French fries. And we said, no, we're going to eat grapes right now.

And you've already, you know, had some I want some French fries. And so it was going on. Now, at this same time in her life, Abigail had also learned the famous and beloved children's song. Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so.

And in her ingenious little line, after her third request and no satisfaction, finally, she just put all this together in an ingenious way. And little Abigail said, I want French fries right now for the Bible tells me so. She had figured out at the ripe age of two or three years old, she figured out that the Bible was important at our house. And if you want to get something, you better use the Bible to get it. Unfortunately, throughout history, people have realized that if there's something holy like scriptures, the word of God, that if you want to get people to do something that sometimes you can just use the Bible however you'd like to use the Bible. The word of God is the most wonderful, supernatural, glorious, spirit-filled writing ever inscribed. And I live my life by the honey of the word of God.

The word of God becomes sweeter to me every day. I love the word of God. I love the Bible. The Bible is wonderful. And the Bible has also been used for almost every sort of diabolical shame.

It sounds like a strange thing to say, but of course the devil himself tried to use the Bible against Jesus. In other words, just because somebody puts some scripture in their quote doesn't mean that they are speaking the gospel to you. I want to say up front, guys, that everything that I'm going to be saying in our meeting together now is honest, it is personal, but it is not at all to say that I'm disgusted with and don't like the church of Jesus Christ. I love church. I love church. I've been a pastor for 25 years. I was a youth pastor for two years. I've been preaching before that. This is what I love, being with the people of God. The comments that I have for us in our meeting are not meant to erode your love and confidence in the body of Christ. I want to elevate that, but I want us to see what the church really is called to be, who we really are as the body of Christ. I want to help, honestly, I want to help the church of Jesus Christ today get rid of the shame because people by their droves have voted with their feet and left the church because what they smelled didn't smell good.

It smelled like shame to them, and people will smell that from a mile away. I've been in almost every sort of church. I've been in not every single church, but I've been in a lot of churches. In fact, I grew up in a formal liturgical church, and then I was in a kind of conservative evangelical more Bible church. I went to seminary and pastored for a season in a mainline denominational church. It was very liberal, and then I have been in many different charismatic fellowships, so I've experienced something of just about all of the different kinds of churches, and I have experienced some of the most wonderful people in every context, and I have also experienced shame in all the contexts. When I was in the formal liturgical church, the church of my childhood, there was a whole lot of liturgy, standing up, sitting down, reading from books responsibly, singing certain songs responsibly, short sermon, communion all the time, and as a child, just to be honest with you, and I didn't really know the Lord during this time, so that kind of flavors my memory of all this, but as a child, I just remember thinking in that really formal church that the pressure was on. It's like as a kid, I'd go to church, and it's like this is the place where we've got to wear the right clothes, sit more still than I want to sit, be more quiet than I want to be, and make sure that I don't mess up, because somebody might pinch me, correct me, and so as a child, I just thought, this is the pressure's on, I kind of look forward to getting out of church, didn't look forward to going to church. Now I want to just say that a good liturgical church can be fantastic, can aspire us to the majesty of God, and liturgy and order can be very comforting. I'm not against in any shape or form having liturgy.

I think people have different preferences with this, but what I'm saying is the preoccupation can become with doing it right, and it can make people feel like that you're not doing it right, and so you don't fit, and if people think that church is about doing it right and not messing up, then how are they going to know that what it's really about is like being a little child who can come into the arms of his or her father and enjoy the presence of the Lord. Thanks, Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. 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.

Now we are in our final days of 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. I've had some pretty funny experiences over the years. For a period of time during seminary, I had the great, great privilege of working at First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. And this was a pretty high church with the liturgy. And oh, the pastor I worked with, what a wonderful spirit-filled man of God. It was just, this was very, and some of the most beautiful people of God I've ever met at that church. But my first time preaching in that church as a very young man, as a seminarian. And I had focused so much on the message and I delivered the message and I felt like the message was great.

I just hadn't stopped to think at all about what was supposed to come next in the service. It's like I'd finished my message and I just didn't know what to say. And so my wife still laughs at me about this. My first time of preaching in that grand pulpit and I got to the end and I said, Amen. And I looked down and I was groping around to find the bulletin and realized we were supposed to sing a song. And so I stumbled out the words, let's all gather together and sing hymn number such and such. My wife later said, gather together?

What do you want us to do, clump around a little closer than we were or something? And just that I just didn't know what to say next. And that was part of what it was like, you know, I want to make sure we do this right. One time at First Presbyterian Church, this is the way the service would start with 11 chimes at the 11 o'clock service. The organist would chime, doom, doom, doom at 11 chimes. And then at the 11, we were trained at the ninth chime, all the pastors, we'd all stand up at the ninth chime and that would cue everybody else to stand up.

And then we start singing the doxologies and that's how the service would start with the doxology. Well, one time the pastor was gone and so we were less disciplined. And so the other pastors and all out in the hallway and we were kind of trying to get our act together and get ready to go in. And all of a sudden somebody said, wait a minute, he's in there chiming the hour. The organist was seated where he couldn't tell whether the pastor was in there or not. And so he had been chiming the hour and we were just running in and the hour had already been chimed.

The people just went ahead and stood up and started singing the doxology without us. So that worked out just fine. So I just realized that for some people that have been in the really formal church that sometimes somebody needs to say, you know, it's not about doing it right.

It's sometimes it's messy. Sometimes spirituality is not eloquent and it's okay because the Lord looks on the heart. I was also in a kind of conservative Bible church growing up. It was so priceless to me that when we all really came to a personal relationship with Christ and somebody invited us to this fantastic evangelical church with a great evangelical preacher and that shaped my life as much as anything has ever shaped my life. I also got involved in prayer church ministries that really emphasize quiet times with God, devotional life, spiritual disciplines, witnessing and really helped cultivate a personal relationship with Jesus. I was very thankful for that and I was very thankful also in college to be involved in a prayer church ministry and a Bible church that again emphasized the importance of God's word, emphasized the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus, emphasized the importance of having quiet devotional times of prayer and Bible study and emphasized evangelism. So I was very thankful for those churches and those ministries that I was involved in and met some of the most wonderful people. And everybody said, you know, that it was important that you spend time with God, which is absolutely important that you spend time with God.

But this is just, again, through the shame filter. Here's what I began to hear was, whereas in the formal church, I felt like I got to do it right. In the more kind of conservative Bible church, I started getting the idea that the whole thing is about making sure that I never miss a quiet time.

You know, we had accountability with one another. We'd say to each other, you know, in our Bible study, we'd say, listen, have you been having your quiet times with the Lord every morning? And in the first place, I wasn't really a morning person, you know, and it always seemed like it was more holy to, you know, spend time with the Lord early in the morning. And, you know, like the real saints are up at like 4 a.m. And I started thinking, you know, doggone it, I'm up so late, I could actually count this as being for tomorrow.

I'd be more spiritual than the really holy people. But anyway, we'd remind each other, we'd say, have you been having your quiet times? And I remember one time in a Bible study and one of the real, you know, we thought spiritually mature said, I got to confess, I hadn't had a quiet time in a month.

And we were like, you know, like you just announced that, you know, he had robbed a bank or something. And I started getting this idea that, you know, if I had my quiet time in the morning, then that day would go well, but if I didn't have my quiet time, then God probably was going to be like this, I might get hit by a bus. And of course, how silly all that is. And what I've come to understand now, of course, is that yes, all the spiritual disciplines are really important that reading my Bible, I love the Bible. And I love prayer. But it's all about cultivating and being with Jesus. And every time I open the Word of God, it's about being filled with the gospel, about being filled with good news.

So it's not something that I do as a nearly as much as a duty as I do as a love and something that's just very, very natural. Because if you take this through a shame filter, it can start becoming like the people that read their Bible a lot and pray a lot and witness a lot and evangelize a lot, that these are the really, that's what it's all about. And you can end up substituting a real relationship with Jesus for all the things that Christians are supposed to do. So if you ever have been in a moralistic or legalistic or behavior oriented church, then I need to just say to you, you are accepted not because of your behaviors, but you're accepted because of the behavior of Jesus Christ. And what you have received by faith through grace is a free and utter gift from God. And it's not earned even by reading your Bible a lot or by witnessing to others as important as all of that is. I had a sense of revelation about this when I heard somebody teach some years ago about the way in which Jesus discipled people. Because we tend to say to people in the more moralistic settings of Christianity, we tend to say, if you will behave all the right ways, believe all the right things, then you could really belong.

You know, get your beliefs down, get your behaviors down, and then you can really belong. But if you go back and you look at Jesus's ministry, that's not really the way he did it. He just called to himself a tax collector, some bumbling fisherman. He called to himself some impetuous disciples.

He even called one who would ultimately betray him. But what he said was, come and be with me, belong with me, be with me. And then over time, your beliefs will change. And as your beliefs change, your behaviors will change.

With Jesus, it was belong, then believe, then behave. That's instructive to us, I think, in the body. Alan Wright, today's Good News message, hardening of the arteries.

It's from the series Free Yourself, Be Yourself, and the conference that we're listening to. And Pastor Alan will be back in the studio here in just a few moments with our part in Good News Thought today as we place the bookmark here. 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 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.

We are in our final days of 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. Back now with Pastor Alan in the studio, I love the play on words here, hardening of the arteries, and that last line you said about belong, believe, and then it leads to behavior. Exactly. You know, we default towards what we ought to do and telling people what they ought to do. And it just doesn't empower us. The law only serves the function of letting us know how much we need Jesus. It doesn't matter what code you try to follow, you'll end up breaking it. And that's true, whether it's the Ten Commandments or whether it's your own code that you set up.

We don't have the power. And so what God does is doesn't just give us all the things we ought to be doing. Instead, he came in the person of Jesus, did all the things that we ought to have done, said all the things we ought to have said, and left unsaid the things that we ought to have left unsaid. In other words, he lived a sinless life on your behalf. And when you accept Christ, his righteousness is merited unto you, reckoned unto you. What glorious news that is.

And that's how you get healed from hardening of the arteries. We have in the past, Daniel, aired messages on the radio that were from the original series that I preached originally called Shame Off You. But much more recently, we put this into a conference format and just a setting that I love where we have maybe 30 people that are learning and growing through all these messages about healing from shame.

And we just thought this would be a fantastic teaching to air on the radio and share with all of our listeners as if you were in the room with us, the group of 30 or so people. What I would say is the most liberating truths I've ever discovered. Guilt and shame are two words that typically in the Christian world go hand in hand together. But there is a distinction between the two, right?

Well, we're going to learn a lot about that. You know, guilt is a real thing, right? If I commit a crime, I'm guilty, and I have guilt. So we're all guilty. We all have sinned. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. To say shame off you is not to soften up on sin. That's not what it means. It's not to say that grace means that you get soft on sin either.

Instead, it says, what's the solution to all of this? And what we're distinguishing between is what some have called true guilt and false guilt. But shame is something that's not just the same thing as false guilt, and it's not even the same thing exactly as condemnation. But what we're going to learn is that shame really is a system of thought. It is a whole stronghold, a house of thoughts, a way of looking at life, a way of looking at your own life. And it's subtle at times, and you don't realize it.

And then there are others who've been through the deepest and darkest types of trauma for whom it is a poison that's been taken in very deeply and is very toxic. But the conviction of sin, as we'll discover, is a good thing. That's a gift from God.

It's good to know how we can go a better way. It's good to know how the grace of God can lead us into a better way of living. So that's the grace of God. The conviction of sin is not something to be ever shy about. It's something we should run to because it's good. It's from God.

But the shame that I describe in this series, Daniel, is something we say it's toxic. If you only caught part of today's teaching, 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.