Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. It's an amazing thing if two basketball players get in agreement about how they're going to execute a play.
How much more so if two or three gather in the name of Jesus, get in agreement with God Himself. 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 called Praying, 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's a book written by Pastor Alan called God Moments, and 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. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.
That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching.
Here is Alan Wright. We are claiming promises that God has made, and God likes this. He wants us to know His Word and breathe it back to Him. This is why the Bible says the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, and why Paul said in Ephesians to pray in the Spirit.
And as we've been learning, when you pray the Scripture, you're praying in the Spirit because God's Spirit fills the Word of God. And so you're just like a little child, you're claiming promises. Children are the masters of claiming promises. And the reason that children are so good at claiming promises from their parents is that they can't get anything in any other way.
Okay, they're like, if you could give your child 15 commands to clean your room, do this, do that, do that, they might forget every single command that you gave, but if you gave one little hint of a promise of, today we'll get some ice cream, they will remember that promise, will they not? And they will bring that promise back up to you until they get you to move. And the reason children are so strong on claiming promises is if there's a promise of ice cream, the only way they're going to go to the ice cream shop and get ice cream is if you follow through on your word.
They don't have a car, they can't reach the gas pedal, they can't buy it because they have no money, and they don't have anybody else they can call that will come and take them. You're their person, and so the only thing that they have is your promise. And so they hold on to the promise. And here's the interesting thing about parents making promises to kids is parents, isn't it unbelievable how much you are moved by a child claiming a promise?
Now we are earthly and sinful parents and we don't always follow through very well on our promises, that's part of the problem. I remember a story of a lady named Allison and she had a little boy who she was going to cut his hair and he was so upset. He said, no mommy, I'm afraid you'll cut my ear. She said, I am not going to cut your ear.
I just sit down in his chair and let me just give you a little haircut. Oh, don't cut my ear if you're going to cut my ear. She said, I promise I am not going to cut your ear.
Finally he settled down and she went snip, snip, and the second snip she cut his ear and drew blood. You think about a parent, you don't always keep the promises perfectly. Sometimes you mean well and you don't, and sometimes you just wish you hadn't said it, but this much is true. That when a child comes to a parent and says, but you promised, the parent might say, well, that's not exactly what I said. Or they might've said, well, I didn't mean I was going to do it right now. Or they might say, you didn't hear that correctly.
Or they might've said, well, I was going to do that only if you cleaned up your room. You might say some of those things, but no, I don't know any parent that when the child comes and says, but you promised, the parent says, yeah, you're right. I promised and I hereby break my promise because I don't care about my promises.
It doesn't matter to me. I'll break them sometimes. Sometimes the parent doesn't say that.
Isn't that crazy? It's like the parent still values because your word means something. I mean, just, just as an earthly sinful parent, your word to your child means something.
And when your child pulls on that, it pulls at you. The promises of God are eternal and not one word that proceeds from his mouth will ever fall to the ground empty or return to him void. We're just little children and all we have is the promises of God. But thankfully the promise of God is everything. Let it be to me according to your word. It's an incredible appeal to a promise. Now, what this means is that it's good reason to keep your nose in this book to know these promises and to understand them, not just in pulling out little verses out of context, but to understand the narrative, the great meta-narrative, the big story of the gospel and what God's done for us in Jesus Christ so that the word will dwell richly in your heart.
Because it's not powerful to try to claim something that's not a promise. We've told the story often. Well, you may have heard it, but Abby was, she was two or three, I don't know, we were at a restaurant and we were trying to steer her away from eating french fries which she loved. And we were trying to get some fruit in her or something, but unfortunately somebody at the table ordered french fries and she couldn't see anything except for the french fries. And she started, I want french fries, french fries. She could barely talk, I want french fries.
And we're like, no, if you eat some fruit, you know, and she's just staring at the french fries, french fries, french fries. Well, evidently it had been just recently that she had learned the famous children's song, Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so. And just, you know, brilliant little two year old and she finally looked up and she said, I want french fry right now for the Bible tells me so. And she found out in our family that if you can mention the Bible, it's going to get you a little extra, you know. So she started from that time, she say for the Bible. If there's something she really wanted, she say, I want to say for the Bible.
And she just thought that was the answer. Well, you can't just say for the Bible tells me so if the Bible doesn't tell you so. So you get the word of God dwelling richly within you and you call these things back up to the Lord. And what you need to understand is that the Lord will sometimes fulfill a promise in a way that it may not be a literal fulfillment, but it is a fulfillment and it's better than what you could have asked for.
That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Ever been facing a problem when a well-meaning Christian friend said something like, you just need to have more faith. The problem with such an exhortation, of course, is that telling someone that they ought to have more faith doesn't actually help a person have more faith. We all want more faith, but what can we do to get more faith? In his highly acclaimed book, God Moments, Pastor Alan Wright describes one of the most important biblical pathways to building your faith, remembering God's presence in your life. When you see God's faithfulness yesterday, you'll find it easier to trust him tomorrow. Your life is full of God moments.
And through Alan Wright's teaching series and book, you'll have a treasure map to help you discover them all. When you make a gift, we'll send you a very special bundle. It's Alan Wright's faith building book, God Moments, and the CD album of the series that he has preached on the subject. We'll send you both when you make your gift today. It's time to discover your God moments from yesterday and be filled with fresh faith for today. Call us at 877-544-4860. Today is the final day we're offering this special product. Come to our website, PastorAlan.org.
Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. As one scholar put it in understanding what has happened from the promises in the old covenant prophetically that are fulfilled in Jesus that people before couldn't have fully understood, but it was still a fulfillment of a promise. So envision a father who tells his son in the early part of the century that when you grow up, I'm going to get you the best horse and buggy that money can buy. But while the child's growing up, Henry Ford invents an automobile that is available.
And so at the 16th birthday, the daddy buys his boy a car instead of a horse and buggy. You wouldn't say, well, he didn't fulfill his promise. You'd say he fulfilled his promise, but in a better way than he could have explained to the little boy.
That's what God has done. Now one of the examples of such prayer that is very much like what Mary prays, I want to draw your attention to quickly in 2 Samuel chapter 7, David has finally become king over Israel after all these years of being persecuted by King Saul. And David is visited by the prophet Nathan, who the Lord sent to tell David great and wonderful things about his future. And he tells Nathan in 2 Samuel 7, tells David the word of the Lord that not only is David king, but he says at verse 13 of David's own family, I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. He makes a promise that David is going to be not only king, but that his descendants will always be on the throne. And again, at verse 16, your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me, your throne shall be established forever. Well, this is the prayer of David that follows.
It's absolutely beautiful model, just like Mary. Verse 18, King David went in and he sat before the Lord and said, Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house that you have brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord God, you've spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come.
This is instruction for mankind, O Lord God. And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord God. And David just goes on essentially saying, Lord, I know I don't deserve this. Lord, I'm just your servant.
This is incredible what you have spoken. And then he just lifts up the name of the Lord and all that God has done in delivering the people from Egypt. Verse 24, you established for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever and you, O Lord, became their God. And then here's the prayer at verse 25. And now, O Lord God, confirm forever the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house and do as you have spoken. That's the same kind of prayer. David couldn't even possibly understand everything that it would mean for him and his house to be on the throne forever because it was actually a promise that would be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Son of David, reigning eternally on a spiritual throne.
And so David essentially just knows well enough to say, let it be just like you've said. Well, let me just mention the final part of this is that there is such power when you pray like Mary, let it be to me, according to your word, because what you're doing, very simply put, is agreeing with God. The word confess, we normally associate it with confessing sin, but the word confess actually means to say with. It is to say with God.
So yes, there's a sense when you confess your sin, you're acknowledging something that God already knows, but when you confess something, you're saying it in accord with God. You're saying it with God. And there is such power in agreement. Sometime we must do a study just to look at the whole theme of agreement that runs all throughout the scriptures.
But you just think about this in life, how very, very essential it is that there be agreement and when there is, how much more likely something is to happen. I don't know why this story came to my brother when he was in high school, was in driver's training and the instructor would take three students out and they would go driving on the streets and they would rotate who was driving and my brother Mark said one day he was driving, he had taken his turn driving and now there was a teenage girl that was driving, the instructor sitting up next to her and they're driving down the road and the instructor said to her, now look down the road there, you see there's a big rock over on the right over there, right at the curb. He said, be sure you don't hit that rock. And my brother said she just drove right down the street and just veered right into it and just slammed right into the rock. Now what happened with that was he was trying to say to her, I want to get your eyes off of the rock and do something else but something inside of her began to go, oh no, I might hit the rock, oh no, I might hit the rock, I might hit the rock.
And in a mysterious way, something aligned up with the fear of hitting the rock and she just went and hit the rock. See, at every point in life there are conflicting voices that we are hearing and some of the voice that is misleading us is just from our own sin nature. It's just our own brokenness. It's just the way we see the world incorrectly and we hear that voice of shame and we hear that and sometimes the voice is directly spiritual warfare and the mystery of how spiritual warfare works, we sometimes can just be attacked with temptation. So these voices that are essentially saying and hell would love this message to be the message to get every child to agree with is that you don't amount to anything, you're not going to amount to anything, look at you, you're not worth very much, there's no great hope for you, there's no great destiny in front of you. And if a child agrees with that voice, the child's course of life is going to move down that path. But there's another voice from heaven and hopefully that voice is coming through parents and others that say to that child, you are fearful and wonderfully made and you are designed in the very image of God and He has made you for a wonderful purpose and God's going to do wonderful things in your life. And if a child agrees with that voice, it's going to shape that child's life, isn't it? Do you understand how important agreement is?
Anything that you're going to do, if you can have agreement with someone else, it increases the likelihood of success exponentially. It's just the way God made us. I enjoyed watching the basketball season this year, college basketball, and it wasn't just Coast Carolina won the national championship and it helped out. But I do love college basketball and I like it better than NBA basketball because in the NBA I feel like I'm watching these great individual moves that happen out there which is incredible to athletes, but college basketball, it's about who can play as a team, it really is. And you just think about just one time down the floor, how many thousand points of agreement that a basketball team has to have with just like one little play, we call it the alley-oop where a guard throws the ball up above the rim and one of the power forwards comes in, grabs it above the rim, slam dunks it. Can you imagine all that has to take place in agreement for just one simple motion like that to happen? It might just be a little look from the guard.
It might not even be that. It might be there's just so much agreement that they just feel each other and they know what they're going to do. And so it's like you don't even think about it, but it's like we agree, I'm going to throw the ball up. You agree, you're going to jump up and catch it. We agree that this person is going to set the screen right here.
All of this is taking place. And if you don't have that agreement, the guard throws the ball up, it just goes out of bounds. Marriage depends, healthy marriage depends on agreement. You just get points of agreement and you build on those points of agreement. You're not going to agree on everything, but when you get to the place where you can't agree and then you just become disagreeable and that's what suffers our relationship. But a little marriage flourishes when you have points of agreement.
I'm just saying this is the way life works. And so when Mary prays, let it be unto me according to your word, what she is essentially saying is I am aligning my life in agreement with what you have said. God and I are in agreement.
That's a powerful thing. I'm just saying if it's an amazing thing if two basketball players get in agreement about how they're going to execute a play, how much more so if two or three gather in the name of Jesus, get in agreement with God himself. See when you get saved, when you accept Christ, you're not saying to God, well God I know you'd rather me go to hell, but would you please change your mind about this? That's not what the prayer is, right? If you're ever going to know Christ, it's going to be Lord, you came in the person of Jesus because it was your heart and your desire that I be saved. I may have run contrary to that for a long time, but I hereby say yes to your saving work. So come into my life, fill me with the Holy Spirit and empower me to live for you all the days of my life. You see, even the moment of being a Christian is just simply agreeing with God.
Martin Luther said it best, prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of his willingness. I had a friend in seminary, his brother was a waiter, served tables at one of the finest restaurants in Atlanta and one day a man came in, well dressed, ate by himself and my friend's brother served him and he said, you know, this guy's going to leave me a big tip. So he made sure water glass was always full, food was served just on time, everything was just perfect, did his very best. To the server's horror, he noticed at the end of the meal, the man got up and left the table, left the restaurant without paying his bill and left no tip. And the waiter was furious. He ran out, chased him down in the parking lot, grabbed the man, turned him around and said, how dare you come into this nice restaurant and walk out without paying your bill and obviously leaving me no tip. And he said, I demand that you make this right. And the man said, hold on son, did you not talk to your manager? The waiter said, no. He said, son, I own this restaurant. It was fine service.
I had left you a hundred dollar tip with the manager. You don't need a prayer life that grabs God's collar and shakes him around a little bit and tries to convince him to do something good for you. He's already come and the person of Jesus Christ to die in your place.
What greater love has any man than this that he laid down his life for his friends. God has already established for all eternity. He is utterly 100% for you and every good and perfect gift comes down from God.
In fact, he is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond anything you could dream up. So you'll have a better prayer life if you'll just look into the word, be astonished by his promises and then say, let it be under me according to your word. And that's the gospel. Alan Wright and today's teaching the prayer of agreement in our series, praying pure word.
Alan's back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and today's final word. God's always been there. In every moment you narrowly escaped from danger. In every moment you were surprised by a blessing.
In every moment you just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace.
Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift, we'll send you a special bundle, both pastor Alan's heart stirring book, God moments and a CD album containing all his audio messages on the subject. Make your gift today and start your spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments.
How you remember yesterday will determine how you live tomorrow. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. Today is the final day we're offering this special product.
Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastor alan.org. Alan, I think right here, we've hit the nail on the head. You've given us great reason for those who might say, you know, well, why should I study the word of God? What is it going to do? How can I apply that for my life?
What good is it going to do today? And right here, how can we know how to agree with God unless we're in his word? Exactly. You know, when Mary just said, let it be unto me, according to your word, she is praying one of the most simple and yet most profound prayers imaginable. What you've said, Lord, is what I want. I agree with you, you know, and that breathtaking yieldedness that is reflected in a prayer that then becomes unbelievably bold. I just want to leave our listeners with this. The words I quoted from Martin Luther, prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of his willingness. He loves you and he is a God who has only your best in mind. And it's in his word, lay hold up. This good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.
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