Daily Blessing Compilation #17

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. My dad was the coach of the football team, and as much as I craved my father's blessing, I'm sure glad that he didn't bless me with a vision of becoming an NFL football player.

That would have been maybe wishful thinking for my football dad, but it would have been ill-advised because I probably would have been permanently maimed if I'd followed that route. 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 to bring you some great teaching from the studio today in our special Friday blessing broadcast, diving deeper into the book, The Power to Bless, and sitting with the author of that book, Pastor Alan Wright.

It's good to be with you as we get practical. Well, Daniel, I love these special Fridays where we're time to time, we just get to really, in many ways, go deeper into not just the content of this book that we're so excited about, but to really engage with listeners here in a very practical way as we talk about what it means to bless someone, for your life to be blessed and to bless someone else. And we're really talking about something there that's a positive vision that's spoken in faith over someone's life. And I think that the first thing that happens is people start learning about blessing is they go, well, is that just for the spiritual elite at all?

Is that for... No. And in fact, I wrote the book with every believer in mind and even the unbeliever in mind that there is a way in which you can get started today. And we are going to, today, Daniel, really dive into the essence of what would it look like for our words to start matching more the way God speaks.

So in a very bold way, we're going to learn how to speak like God. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire broadcast today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special offer and you can get that. We'll tell you more about it later in the program, but at pastorallen.org, a place to keep bookmark, to visit and check often, but certainly we'll get you plugged in with today's special offer.

And we also want to remind you of our daily blessing. It's a free email that you can sign up for. It's available not only in email, though, Pastor Alan, it's available in video and audio form as well.

It is. You can get it in podcasts. You can also find it on social media, but tens of thousands of people are being blessed by just start their day or pillow their head at night with an affirmation from God's word.

You just let it become part of you. We do not, and we'll be talking more about this today, we do not find encouragement, strength, and real transformation by being told what we ought to do, or even what we ought to be like. Instead, we're empowered when a godly biblical vision of who we are in Christ and all that God's done for us and all that we can be. When that's spoken over, something inside of us spiritually rises to meet it. And Daniel, I just like the privilege of being able to speak that blessing over people every day through a simple email that goes out.

It's totally free. And you just go to pastorallen.org, sign up for it today and let it be part of your day, part of your rhythm, part of your growing in the power of grace, a daily blessing. I love it. We've enjoyed these Friday blessing broadcasts. And as we've been going on a journey through the book, I don't think anybody would argue that the book is very practical, but if we want to turbocharge the practicality, we're in the final couple of chapters of this book, which really do bring the rubber and the road together. And so let's jump into that.

And there's a very, I think, a very practical opening to this chapter as it involves something parents of teenagers may be facing today. Well, here's just an example of a real life scenario. And we want to talk about real life and how does blessing work?

What does blessing sound like in the middle of the kinds of events that we face day by day? So let's just take one scenario. Imagine that you have a teenage son. Just imagine this. You don't have to have children who you don't have to imagine it, but imagine you have a teenage son who just wrecked the car.

He was texting while driving and the crash didn't injure your son or the others, but it did damage the car significantly. So what's going to be your response? Put yourself in that position. What's your knee-jerk response? I'm not talking about what you think you ought to say or what manner of discipline you might apply. I'm saying, what would you say in that situation? And I want you to, every listener, I want you to be honest with yourself. Imagine the frustrations, the fears that you're feeling over the folly of a son that was texting while driving. What's your gut response?

Which of these? I'm going to give you a few statements and say, which one would you most likely say? Would it be something like, you are so irresponsible, I'm afraid you're going to get yourself killed. Or would you say something like, if you'd been paying better attention, this wouldn't have happened.

Or would you say something like, well, boys will be boys. Don't worry. It's no big deal. I'm just glad you're not hurt. Well, take a moment.

Think about that. Which would be your response? So just, well, you might be thinking, okay, well, which one sounds most like blessing? I'm sure it's right.

And if so, you might've chosen the one that seemed so forgiving. Well, here's kind of the trick, Daniel. None of those statements are a blessing statement. And in fact, the first declaration, you're so irresponsible, I'm afraid you're going to get yourself killed. That really is, and we'll talk more about this, what we mean by curse. It is a statement that has a negative label, a fear-based dark forecast, not rooted in grace or truth. And it's emphasis that gives no real help at all.

In fact, it hurts. The second statement that I mentioned, if you had been paying better attention, this wouldn't have happened. Well, that is a true statement, but it is not helpful. It's sort of like the law. We'll talk about that. It's like, it's true. It doesn't empower. What does that statement, if you've been paying more attention, this wouldn't have happened.

Well, that's what I would call moralism. We'll talk about that today. And the third statement, which is so full of grace, you know, boys will be boys. Don't worry. It's no big deal.

I'm just glad you're not hurt. Well, there's a lot of grace in that, right? And your son would not feel condemned, but would not be helped because it's not true. Because the fact of the matter is it is a big deal to text and drive.

It's a big deal for anybody, especially for a fledgling driver. So that thing where it's all grace and no truth, I'd call that amoralism. So let's think of it this way. Curse says you've messed up. You're doomed.

You shouldn't have been texting. And now you're ruining your life. And you're probably going to really get hurt bad one day or do something bad. Moralism says you need to be better in order to be accepted. You got to change and then maybe you'll be.

Amoralism, the lack of any morality says you don't need to be better, just be yourself. And you could probably recognize some of all of that in the way that we interact with each other. But real blessing, and this is what we want to talk about today, is an expression of both blessing, of both grace and truth. And so what would blessing say to the son?

Well, it would be something like this. I'm so glad you aren't hurt. I love you, not the car. But you can be a better driver than this. You're smart enough to know the dangers of texting and driving. God has a great destiny planned for you and it doesn't include distracted driving. Every time you get in the car, remember you're my treasure.

So put down the phone and drive safely. You see the difference there is to power blessing paints a vision that is godly, biblical, powerful, hopeful, and positive. You want to instill an identity that the son doesn't start thinking, I'm an irresponsible person who's probably doomed.

That's not what you want because we tend to live up to our identity. But we don't want to convey just grace without truth. It says it doesn't matter what you do in this world or how you act.

That's terrifying to think that somebody would try to raise a child thinking that there's not consequences. So it's the bringing together the grace and the truth. And maybe that's a good place to start talking about how do we learn to talk like God, grace and truth? Well, obviously this is not just limited to parenting, but boy, parenting is a wonderful illustration because I think there's that sense of responsibility as a parent that you can't just let the truth part go.

You're called to guide, you're called to guard your children. And so what a wonderful way to start that chapter. Yeah, full of grace and truth and Jesus was that, right? Well, the prologue to the Gospel of John tells us the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we've seen his glory, glory as the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. One of the most important verses in the Bible, because this is making clear that Jesus and his glory are manifest where grace and truth are wed. And Jesus was not 50% grace and 50% truth. He's 100% grace all the time and 100% truth all the time, perfectly gracious and perfectly truthful. And this is something that we mere mortals usually swing back and forth like a pendulum. You know, I always laugh about Daniel.

It's like as a parent, you know, there are times, man, I'm just like, especially vacation. It's amazing how much grace I can have. Hey, Dec, can we have some ice cream? Sure. Okay.

Can we have some second scope? Sure. Let's have some more. Can we stay up late tonight? Absolutely.

You know, and there are times where it's just like, I'm just all grace and where's the truth. And then there are other times like, can we have an ice cream? No, it's terrible for you. Can we stay up late? No, get to bed. We gotta, you're not having enough sleep as it is.

Yeah. And you're all truth. But Jesus wasn't like that.

He was always truthful and always gracious. And I think that that's what we need because we don't need unbridled permissiveness and we don't need strict rule enforcement. What we need if we're going to be, for example, great parents, but it applies to all of life is both grace and truth. So blessing is best understood as an act of both grace and truth. It's love spoken, put into words according to God's word. And it is authentic discernment of who people are. So let me put it this way.

To affirm someone with something that is inaccurate is counterproductive. Like I played, I played Bewe football as a kid. I actually loved football. I was a running back. Yeah.

Get that ball and run, you know? And I was pretty quick little guy, but I was a little guy. And by the time that I made it to the midget league, everybody else was growing and I wasn't. And I started getting crushed out there.

Yeah. Well, my dad was the coach of the football team. And as much as I craved my father's blessing, I'm sure glad that he didn't bless me with a vision of becoming an NFL football player.

That would have been silly. Alan, I think you'll make it to the NFL. I can see great football in your future and all that.

That would have been maybe wishful thinking for my football dad, but it would have been ill-advised because I probably would have been permanently maimed if I'd followed that route. And so the wrong kind of praise that's not rooted with truth is not a blessing at all. On the other hand, just giving truth without any grace to it is a kind of expression that really, it hurts the soul of another person. And we must therefore learn that when grace and truth come together, something very much like Jesus's presence takes place. And so start with that, that we have grace and we have truth.

And the more that we can have both, the more we really have blessing. So in the end, Daniel, there's not just blessing and curse, but I think you can almost think of this as four ways of speaking, that there's grace and truth, that's blessing. There's grace without any truth and that's permissiveness or maybe you call it amoralism. There's truth that has no grace and it's very moralistic.

And of course there's curse, which is no grace, no truth. - Pastor Alan Wright in the studio today. It's our Friday blessing broadcast. And by the way, and we also encourage you to check out the daily blessing.

It's an email that you can plug in and get free in your inbox daily, or you can find it on social media, also a podcast video version available. And that's a great way to connect in at pastorallen.org with the daily blessing. And all of those coming straight from the power to bless that we're talking about. And in particular right now, learning to speak like God and Pastor Alan, I've heard you talk about this in many different ways before, and it's hard to wrap our mind around it.

And it's certainly hard to live it out. And that is understanding that Jesus was 100% grace and 100% truth. And so to break that down into the practicality of how do we learn to speak like God, there's a quadrant here, the four that you just mentioned.

Do you want to talk more about that? Well, I've put this in the book, Daniel, into a very simple visual that I think helps make sense of this. It's in the book. And of course, if you don't have the book, well, we hope you'll get it. But write us if not, and ask us for this quadrant.

We'll be glad to send you a PDF of it. But you could envision two lines. The first one, our horizontal axis, so to speak. And let's call that the line of truth. And so if you can envision as you go left on the continuum, less truth going to the right, the arrow going that direction, more truth. But then imagine it's intersected by a vertical line, and we call this the line, the grace line. So as you go up, more and more grace, as you go down, less grace.

So it leaves us with four quadrants. And as we've said, that upper right hand quadrant, where there's ever increasing grace, ever increasing truth, so it's grace and truth. That's what we mean by blessing. It's positive, it's grace filled, it is affirming, but it has authentic discernment rooted in God's word, and so it's both. Doesn't lack either.

Doesn't lack either. Because grace is good and truth is good, but if you just have one without the other, it's not really that good. But if you look down the opposite of blessing, so blessings, that upper right quadrant, if you would envision what's the opposite of it, the lower left quadrant, now you're over on the side of this little visual where there's no grace and no truth. That's what curse is. We'll talk more about curse, but it really is a negative forecast that doesn't, it's not built on God's word. It's built on lies really. And it's built with such hopelessness that there's no grace in it whatsoever. So curse is a negative type of deception-based, fear-based proclamation that we hear over our lives, unfortunately, quite regularly in the world around us.

But there's not just blessing and curse. Envision the other two quadrants that have been formed by these lines. Again, horizontal line of truth, vertical line of grace.

The lower right quadrant where there's lots of truth but no grace is what I'm calling moralism. And let's talk about that for just a moment, Daniel. I mentioned in the book a scene from Steinbeck's classic East of Eden, which is sort of a retelling of the Cain and Abel story of this sibling rivalry and this unquenchable quest for a father's blessing. And so Adam Trask's son, Cal, is very jealous of the more likable brother, Aaron, who clearly has more of the father's affection. And knowing their father lost wealth in a harebrained refrigeration business scheme, Cal thinks he knows the way to the father's heart. And that is he'll make a lot of money and they'll give it to his father. So Cal approaches this other character, Will Hamilton, a businessman who's got kind of a Midas touch, and asks him for advice on getting rich. And in the dialogue, Will says, you have a brother. Does your father like him better than you?

And Cal responded, everybody does. And Will asked, suppose you should get this money and give it to your father. Would it cross your mind that you're trying to buy his love? And he responds, yes, sir, it would.

And it would be true. And most moralists aren't so honest about that. But moralism is an attempt to try to buy blessing, really, in that sense.

It is to become legalistic. Or maybe you could just say this in the general negative sense of it's what religion does. It's what the Pharisees did. It always turns the Bible into this moralistic like, you know, David was brave. Go be like David and face your giants also, which doesn't, it's not untrue that we need to face our giants. It just doesn't help us to say we ought to be brave.

We need something to happen to make us become great. And that's the grace of God. Well, if you think about the opposite of moralism, now you go up to that upper left quadrant.

This is where lots of grace, that's the top part of our grid, but no truth. And in many ways, this is, if you thought of the story of the man who had two sons, we call it the prodigal son. Well, the older brother was moralistic.

He stayed at home and acted like a slave doing everything just right. But the older was a picture of, I mean, the younger was a picture of amoralism. He just wanted to do what was right in his own eyes.

So he goes off to a faraway land and he squanders inheritance and wild living. And it is amoralism, Daniel, doesn't mean that there's an anti-morality or that you're trying to be bad. It just means I don't think there really is right and wrong. And if you just have grace and no truth, that's kind of what you get. It's like the spirit of the age where people just think it doesn't matter what you do.

It doesn't matter what you believe. Just live your truth is kind of the thing. Because in other words, there's no real truth.

Well, that's just destructive as well. So again, the visual is of blessing this upper right quadrant, grace and truth. Curse, no grace, no truth. Moralism, lots of truth, no grace. And amoralism, lots of grace, no truth.

And maybe of all of this, the spirit of the age is amoralistic. But boy, we sure hear around us, Daniel, all the time, statements of curse. And maybe it'd be worth lingering here for just a moment to make sure that we are aware of how we escape from this, because it's so prevalent, the way curse is around us. Pastor Alan Wright and we're in the studio today with our special Friday 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. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860, or come to our website, pastoralan.org. Before we go, Pastor Alan, our parting good news thought for the day. And if we are talking about learning to speak like God, well, obviously, we don't want to be under curse or even speaking curse, even sometimes where we may not even realize it. Well, curse again is where you don't have grace or truth. And I think, you know, we need to be aware that we have to learn to reject these kind of statements that are spoken over our lives, especially the you can't or you always or you never.

Those kind of statements, you know, and I'm sure that people right now listening, you can be identified with how there's something in the sin nature that wants to speak like that. And we can say it over ourselves. You know, we say things, I can't get over this cold. I just can't control my temper. I can't win for losing. Or I'll never get over it.

I'll never get another chance like that. Or we say it to each other. You're always in trouble. You always talk too much. You always and all those are really kind of curse statements.

Pay attention to family mottos. Because sometimes it just gets repeated down through the family. If it's not one thing, it's another.

I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know, these kind of things. So they're really small examples of curse. But the more significant thing is when we're young and we mess up and someone, maybe even a parent, says something, maybe you spilled the milk and mom was frustrated and she just said, you're so clumsy and you're always spilling things and messing up mommy's clean house or something.

Well, those kind of things go into us, you see. And I think part of liberation and part of living out our life and the destiny God has is learning to recognize that and to renounce it. And Daniel, all of these curses that get spoken over us, we have the authority to renounce because the scripture tells us that though cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, that Jesus Christ is the one who hung for our sake, Galatians chapter three. And so receive the gospel deeply and believe it truly that if Jesus took the curse, then that means that you are free from that curse. And so what we do, therefore, is we learn to be able to say to the curse statements, I don't receive that.

And I renounce that. And I let all of that go to the cross of Jesus. But my life is hidden in Christ and I'm in Christ. And therefore, here's who I truly am. And you start identifying yourself as a child of God.

It's really important. So our good news thought today is that you can learn to speak like God. He came full of grace and truth, and you have the Holy Spirit and you have the word of God. And as one who has received grace and received truth, you can become a dispenser of both grace and truth. And that's the way God speaks. He speaks by the power of blessing. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.