How to Get People to Change [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. God gave you an excellent brain, so use it.

You see, that's actually a blessing. Instead of saying, You're a dumb kid, I expect you to fail, you say, What I see you doing right now does not match who I know that you are and what I expect your life to be. 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. These three ways of helping people to grow, I would say, are God's ways. The ways that God helps us to grow are the very same ways that we could help others to grow. And the first is this, to sow good seed. Here's the basic principle.

Paul says in Romans 12 verse 21, to not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Everything, everything in this world is built upon the principle of sowing and reaping. And sowing and reaping teaches us essentially that this is the design of God for the universe.

Everything reproduces after its own kind. You put an orange seed into the ground and if you get the right conditions, what will grow is an orange tree and what it will produce is oranges. An orange seed will never in this world produce apples. So if you were to plant an orange seed, somehow hoping that you're going to wind up getting an apple out of it, would be the utmost folly because you can't.

There's no way. Well, in the same way in the Spirit, what we sow is what we can expect to reap. So if there is someone in your life, let's start with our kids and you would like to see your kids be more patient because they're impatient and they're always, they're always talking about how they want it, they want it now or they're impatient, they can't wait on this, can't wait on that. The temptation is what? To be just impatient with them. To be impatient about their impatience. To sow seeds of impatience into some child's heart that is already full of impatience is going to only produce a bigger harvest of impatience. So biblically, what Paul is saying is don't be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. Sow the Spirit that you want to see cultivated in the one that you love. Whatever it is that you want to see developed in the other is the very thing that you should sow.

So oftentimes, what I try to do is just stop myself because I feel my flesh wanting to just respond. See, if somebody sows unkindness towards you, because of the law of sowing and reaping, that sowing of unkindness towards you is trying to place a demand on you of a harvest of unkindness. That's what you wonder, why do I feel so much like I want to be unkind to them because they were unkind to me?

It's because of the principle of sowing and reaping. The very judgment they brought against you is causing there to be within you a demand in the natural to cause you to judge them back. But we are not under these natural commands of the Spirit. We are under a higher order of grace.

We've been set free. And so we have the potential, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, to say what's being sown towards me is unkindness, but what I have in me is the Holy Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness. And I'm going to allow the Spirit of kindness to be sown. It's contrary to everything the flesh wants to do because what we tend to want to do is just look at somebody that's frustrating to us and they're not doing what we want to do and our tendency is to just treat them by sowing seeds that are just as negative as what they're demonstrating. But it never makes sense to expect an orange seed to produce an apple.

Whatever you want to see developed in the other is what you can sow towards them, sowing and reaping. And it starts in Genesis chapter 1. It goes all the way through everything Paul teaches. It goes all the way through the Bible. Everything operates according to this principle that all things reproduce after their own kind. I think that's something very practical that you can do.

I think you can stop when you get in a difficult situation in a relationship of any type and you say, well, what should I do here? How could I actually help them get a vision of the harvest you want to see? What change would you like to see? Sow the seed that can produce that harvest.

That's number one. The second thing that I've discovered biblically that I think we can do is to treat people like heirs, not slaves. To me, this is one of the most fascinating themes in the entire Bible. Do you ever notice that when the people of God were set free through the Passover? If you're not familiar with the story, it's the story where the blood of an innocent lamb was put over the doorposts of the Hebrew homes while they were slaves in Egypt. And wherever there was blood over the door, the destroyer passed over those homes and yet killed all the firstborn of the Egyptians where there was no blood over the door and through this, Pharaoh let the people go. So they were set free by the blood of the lamb. It's a great story, a Passover story. Well, as soon as they're set free, there's an odd thing.

We won't turn there now, but look it up sometime. There's an odd thing that you see and that is that the Lord told the Hebrew people to plunder the Egyptians on the way out of Egypt. It was odd. In other words, he said, tell them to give them their gold, their silver, their jewelry, their stuff, their valuables.

That's odd. Now this is in part to provide for the people of God as they went on their way, but I think there's something else going on. I think that God wanted the people to begin to learn early on, you've been slaves, now you're free, but I want you to learn something other than the fact that you're free.

I want you to learn this, you own something. So what was the whole narrative about? It was about the movement to a promised land. God wasn't just saying I'm going to set you free from slavery. He was saying I'm going to give you a territory and I want you to reign in that territory, I want you to have dominion in that territory, I want you to rule in that territory, you have an inheritance, you have a promised land. So the gospel is not just the announcement that you are saved from your sin and you get to go to heaven one day. The gospel is an announcement that you are saved from your sin by the blood of the lamb, but you are saved so that you would know that you are an heir.

You are an heir of these incredible spiritual riches with which you have been blessed in Christ Jesus. That God wanted his people in the Old Testament to understand themselves, not only that they were free people, but that they were responsible people, they were heirs, they are recipients of a great gift with great potential and they have a destiny. One day we were, I was up at the office on a Saturday afternoon years ago and I just, I was up doing a little work but Mickey Thigpen, our executive director was up on that Saturday afternoon and he was in the office and he was doing something, it was many years ago and he was doing something, some task and I just, I said Mickey, I said why are you up here on a Saturday afternoon doing that task? And he said well, you know, such and such didn't get it done this week.

And I was like well why didn't so and so do that? That's part of her job, you know, and he said I don't know, I guess it's just a matter of ownership. What he was saying was, you know, he said I've got ownership over this, he says, you know, I'm not going to rest until this, you know, I'm responsible for this, I can take ownership of this and he said I need to do it.

And he said, you know, someone else, he said, he was talking about a particular employee at that time who just, you know, just, you know, looked on it more like oh just a job you come to and you go away from, you know, more like it. And then Mickey said I'm trying to convince her that she's not a slave. I was sitting there thinking about the idea of ownership and slavery and who was actually taking ownership and I heard the Holy Spirit say to me, we were standing in their office, I heard the Holy Spirit say only free people own things. Slaves don't own things.

Slaves don't think like heirs. And until people see themselves as owners, they'll never really work to their full potential. And Mickey and I started talking about this, we about had a glory fit right there in the office, you know, you ever get one of those revelations, it's like I'm seeing something I've never seen before. 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?

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.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Here again in the same way that if someone is acting with unkindness towards you, you're tempted to sow a seed of unkindness. In a similar way, when someone is acting like they won't take ownership of anything, we tend to turn around and treat them even more like a slave. Some years ago, Bennett was little and we had just been playing in the yard.

We sat down on the steps to have lemonade. He was about six years old, eight years old at the time. All of a sudden out of the blue, he said, Daddy, what's a slave? And I thought, I don't know if I want to talk to him about this right now. And I said, well, I guess he's got to find out.

You hate to see your children find out about the harsh realities of life. I said, well, Bennett, a slave is somebody that's owned by somebody else. And the slave has to do whatever the slave master says. And little Bennett sat there drinking his lemonade and he thought about it for a moment and he said, I belong to you and I have to do whatever you say. I said, no, no, Bennett, it's totally different with a slave.

It's, see, a slave, a slave, if they don't do what the master says, the master might beat that slave. Bennett said, sometimes I'm not done right. You've spanked me, haven't you? I said, yeah, Bennett, it's different, it's different. And then I kind of mumbled a few things. I said, I need to go out and figure out what the difference is between a son and a slave.

And it came back to this, really for me, if you were to sum it all up, it is that the son, the daughter is an heir. See, a slave will only work up to the point where they're no longer afraid of punishment. As soon as it's five o'clock and I'm not gonna get punished, you're not gonna dock my pay, then I quit. Owners don't think like that. Owners do not think like that.

Owner, I'll tell you one thing, the owner of a business, he is not sitting there, he or she's not going, it's five o'clock, well, I'm just gonna stop. I don't care how many people want to buy something right now. If it's your store and there are 10 people ready to buy something, you're gonna keep your store open and sell it to them because it's your business. But somebody's acting like a slave, they could be 10 people, you've experienced this before, you're sitting there, you go up to the cash register and it's like, I'm sorry, we're closed. Yeah, but I'm right here ready to buy it.

I'm sorry, we're closed. That's not the way an owner would think. And I began to realize one of the ways that we can help people to grow is to instill in them a sense of ownership in the way we treat them, instill a sense of being an heir. And I wish I could say a lot more about that, but I move on to something that's so near and dear to my heart. And this is the third way and maybe the primary way that we have been, I think, authorized by God to be able to help others grow and change. And that is by the power of blessing. To bless someone is to envision in faith a positive future over their life. And it is to announce such positive vision with faith and confidence and authority.

And it is to be actively in favor of seeing that positive vision come to pass. This is something that was an instruction to the Hebrew patriarchs of old that every week they were supposed to bless their children. At least once a week they'd speak blessings over their children.

You know, some have theorized that this is one of the great secrets of the whole people of Israel of how they were able to endure so much. It's just the father speaking blessings to their children, just saying things to their children, just announcing things over their children's lives that were of positive vision. You know, this is one of the wonderful things that we can do in a very simple way is just announce positive things over our kids.

It's like a compliment on steroids. It's like something that I see that's really positive and I see it in faith. And what happens is that our children and those that are under our authority, they hear these announcements over their lives and they rise to meet them. This goes exactly against the way the culture and the spirit of the age tempts us. What we're tempted to do is withhold affirmation, because a lot of parents say, well, I don't want to tell them too much because, you know, it'll go to his head. I don't want to withhold some of the affirmation or else they may quit trying. And what the gospel says is exactly the opposite.

No, no, no, no. What happens is that when you bless people, when you affirm them, when you see the potential and you announce it in faith, people rise to meet it. We tend to believe about ourselves what the most important people in the world believe about us. And blessing is so easy. Bless, do not curse, the scripture says. See, when a parent announces over a child's life that I've had it with you, you're going to be a failure, you never seem to get it right, you're just, it's announcing doom.

It's curse. Don't ever announce the thing that you don't want to have happen. Don't ever call somebody what you don't want them to be.

Right? If you don't want some body to be foolish all the time and be always messing up, don't call them a fool who messes up all the time. They just say, well, that must be what I am, I might as well do that. I was talking to a man one time who had a big struggle, a big pornography addiction struggle. And I said to him one time, I said, do you ever, do you ever, I'll call him John, I said, John, do you ever have a moment where you're falling on that temptation and you say, you know, I just better not get involved in this because I'm going to feel so bad afterwards?

And he said, no, I never think that. He says, I feel so bad about myself that I just decide I'll go ahead and do bad things. You don't want somebody feeling bad about themselves. You don't want somebody hating themselves. You don't want someone feeling cursed.

People who have no hope are much more prone to continued error. It is when you are full of blessing, it is then that you are able to rise up. It was something that I just adopted early on in our family. Let me just tell you how easy this is. Let's just imagine a scene. My son Bennett plays a lot of golf. We've played a lot of golf together over the years. And I could just, I can think back of times when he was younger and at least once a week we'd just have a family meal, cut the TV off, just have a family meal and just enjoy talking each other.

And at this time they would know that dad's going to speak some blessings over their lives. And it doesn't have to be profound. It didn't have to be poetic.

It didn't have to be, it didn't have to be something all written out. It's just so simple. It's just like this. It's like Bennett, you know, we're eating supper and I say, you know, today when we play that nine holes of golf and we got to hole number three and you double bogeyed it. And I said, I know, you know that I know how frustrating that is because when it's only the third hole and you're hoping to shoot somewhere around par that day and yet you already double bogeyed a hole and it's frustrating.

You feel like you ruined your whole round and you feel like throwing your clubs in the creek or whatever. And I said, but instead you, you pulled it together. I saw you, I was hard, but I saw you kept some self control.

You kept your emotion in control. And instead of thinking I'm doomed, you thought, well, maybe I can get it back with a birdie the next hole. And I said, and you did, you birdied the next hole and you end up with a really good round of golf today. And what I'm, what I want to bless you with today, Bennett is not so much that I was how proud I was of a good round you played because I, what I'm saying is I'm proud of you because what I saw was you exercise self control. And Bennett, it's been my experience in life that when a young man can learn self control, that he can go far in this world. And I believe you're going to go far. God bless you for showing that self control.

I think you've got a lot of self control. How long did that take? 60 seconds?

That took 60 seconds. But do you know the spiritual power of something like that? What goes into a young child's heart when he hears something like that? What he says, my daddy thinks I've got self control. I'll go far if I have self control. What does it make you want to do? It makes you want to just aspire to be a person of self control. You rise up to meet the blessing that is spoken over you. You can, you can bless people in your life, even the people that you're mad at because the scripture invites us and people persecute you, bless them. Parents often say to say, well, what about when your children, when they're, when they're acting up and they need to be disciplined? I mean, what do you do? Bless them, even as you're disciplined.

My wife, she's got a excellent way with kids. And when our kids were little and you know, you get that frustration, like I just feel like right now, just ringing somebody's neck, you know, just calling them a name or something, you know, and, and so what we trained ourselves to do, this was her idea was you get to that point and one of the children's done something really dumb and you just say, God gave you an excellent brain, so use it. You see, that's actually a blessing.

Instead of saying you're a dumb kid, I expect you to fail, you say what I see you doing right now does not match who I know that you are and what I expect your life to be. So in the end, there are really three biblical ways, I think, that we can actually help people to grow and change. We can sow the seed that we want to see grow and harvest. We can treat people as heirs, instilling ownership in them, and we can cultivate the wonderful practice of blessing people. In the end, this is the way God has changed us.

He sowed a seed, an incorruptible seed, his own son who was the first fruits of many sons and daughters, and he is the one in his word that told us that we are co-heirs with Christ, and he is the one that despite all of my sin, despite all of our failings, never curses, but instead in Jesus Christ has blessed you with every spiritual blessing. Let's live the same way. That's the gospel. Alan Wright, today's teaching on good news, how to get people to change from our series Free Yourself, Be Yourself. And Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio, sharing a parting good news thought for the day in just a moment.

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. Back in the studio now with Pastor Alan and how today's good news can really change your life.

This subject that we were closing with on the power of blessing is one of course that's so dear to my heart and we have other resources and I'm so excited about a new book that will be coming out in February. Might as well leak that out there, The Power to Bless. God does want us to be useful in helping other people grow.

It's just in our frustration. Sometimes we think, well, grace isn't working so let me try some shame. And I want to say to our listeners, don't give up on grace and don't ever start using the power of curse.

It will never help. It's the power of blessing. You can sow and reap and you can treat others for the heirs that they are. You can help instill an identity through the power of blessing. And these things, Daniel, they really can empower other people to change. We don't need to use shame. We can do it God's way. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.