How Gratitude Conquers Worry [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

There is a way of praying in which you are not just bringing a request, though God wants you to do that, but you have joined it with Thanksgiving. 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, No Worries, 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 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.

You can learn more about it. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news? I read this week that learning to juggle can actually increase the gray matter in your brain. So I went and dug out the juggling balls I hadn't had in at least 20 years to see if I could still do it. And at first, it was hard, but it started coming back. The brain's an amazing thing. Our son Bennett was taught first grade by Emily Wagner, who was the former director of our preschool, and now she's on staff directing major projects for us. But she was a great teacher, but she had a great line.

We used it often. You know when your mind just don't quite get it, you don't quite want to think about it? She'd say, okay, now we're going to make our brains hurt. You know what I'm talking about? I got the juggling balls out. It's like, oh, my brain's hurting. My brain's hurting.

But you keep doing it, and then it keeps coming back. Isn't that amazing? What we're going to see today is the fact that you can increase the gray matter in your brain by juggling leads us to believe that you're not stuck with the brain you have right now. That's a really hopeful thing. You know, we're going to see today as we conclude this long series called No Worries in a definitive passage of Scripture that it is God's will for your life to not worry at all, but instead to give thanks all the time. And I want to show you today this remarkable connection between giving thanks, having peace, and being filled with joy, that this is just inseparably connected.

And what we're going to see is that there's something astonishing because there's a connection between how you think and what you experience of God, which is amazing. Paul was in prison when he wrote to the Philippians. When he wrote these words, Philippians 4, starting at verse 4, he was unjustly incarcerated and had no idea what was going to happen for his future. And this whole little wonderful epistle is just filled with joy. But here he just speaks definitively the word of the Lord.

If you want to know how God wants you to live in this world, here it is. Philippians 4, verse 4. Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. This word could be translated gentleness. The real best translation is a word we don't use very much. Magnanimity, magnanimous means a generous, gentle, kind disposition towards others.

Let that be evident to everybody. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

Let your requests be made known to God. That there is a way of praying in which you are not just bringing a request, though God wants you to do that, but you have joined it with thanksgiving. And the peace of God, when you pray that way, verse 7, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. The image of guarding is of a Roman garrison with soldiers, centurions that are guarding the gates. So the gate to your heart and to your mind has like an image of soldiers guarding it when you have this peace that passes understanding. It's doing something to guard you from a spiritual negative onslaught. Verse 8, finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things. He's saying, train yourself in this and the God of peace will be with you. Wasn't God with us all the time?

Absolutely. So what does he mean? He means that when you train yourself in these lifestyle, thought life patterns of gratitude, you experience the peace of God. He's saying something that is mystifying and intriguing and wonderful. He's saying that what you think about in your mind is a pathway to what transcends the mind.

That's remarkable. It's a matter of heart and mind, spirit and soul. It's a mystery, but it means that you don't simply have to wait around and sort of wishfully imagine that you could become a person of peace.

There's actually a pathway to this, and this is the tool, gratitude. I want to talk to you about thanksgiving and the joy of the Lord and the peace that passes all understanding. It's interesting in my life, I have to, as I look back on it, to be honest and say, though I now am generally a very positive person, don't get me wrong, not always what you see in me as a preacher. I certainly have my negative moments and worries, which is part of the reason for preaching this long series, but there was a season of my life in which I was a negative thinker.

I'm going to just tell you a couple of places where it shows up, if I would be honest about an inventory of my own soul. One was as a kid, I played tennis every day of my life, all the way up through senior year of high school. I wasn't going to be a pro, but I became a pretty good tennis player, played in tournaments all over the state. And I battled, even though I was fairly accomplished as a tennis player, I battled negative thinking on the tennis court when I was in a tight match. I can remember specifically, over and over this happened to me where if I'm serving and now the score's 30, 40 and the game's on the line, I can remember the thought coming in my mind too often, this would be a bad time to double fault. Now anybody's ever played any sports knows if you are trying not to double fault and the thought in your mind is this would be a bad time to double fault, that does not help you. I battled that kind of thinking.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly? Envision it. Being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection. If you mess up, people don't roll their eyes, make fun of you or love you less.

Imagine no more of that anxious feeling that you get deep down in your gut that makes you feel like the pressure is always on so you can never really relax. What you're imagining and longing for is a life with no shame. In paradise, before sin came into the world, the Bible tells us only one thing about Adam and Eve's relationship.

They were naked and felt no shame. Ever since the fall, the human heart has been riddled with shame. It's a lie that says, until you measure up, you can't be truly acceptable. Shame causes some to say, I'll try to be perfect in order to be accepted and others to decide, since I'll never measure up, I might as well rebel.

Either way, the heart is poisoned by shame and there is only one antidote, the grace of God in Jesus Christ. In his highly acclaimed book, Free Yourself, Be Yourself, Pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame, he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul. Discover freedom, joy and destiny as you shed performance-based living and let God take the shame off you for good. It's a life-changing, full-length book from Alan Wright.

Free yourself, be yourself. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer.

Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. This is embarrassing to even admit, but I remember as a youth having times where I'm in a tight match and having a losing mentality come across me enough that I can remember while I'm in the match rehearsing in my mind what I would say to someone after the match about why I lost it. Even though I was a Christian for a number of years, I had experienced the Holy Spirit. I understood the word and I was a student in seminary.

I struggled. In my seminary years, part of my training was to work in a local hospital for clinical pastoral education, we called it. So I was a chaplain part-time at the VA hospital in Atlanta.

And all throughout my time in that hospital, I struggled. I remember a specific event of one evening we were expecting. We had company coming in from out of town and we were going to go over to Stone Mountain.

You can go out there in the spring and summer and put a blanket out and sit there and watch a laser show up on Stone Mountain. It was a beautiful evening and our company was coming and that's what we were going to do. I'd been at the VA hospital and I just before I left prayed with a man who was a vet and he was having part of his leg amputated the next day. And I prayed with him and I remember specifically sitting on that blanket trying to watch that show on the Stone Mountain and being miserable because I could not turn the thought off in my brain that was saying, who are you to be out here enjoying a nice evening with your family while that man is over there in the hospital getting ready to have his foot amputated? Now, of course, I wasn't doing a single good thing for him by just circulating that worried negative thought through my mind, was I? I mean, if you're going to pray for the man, pray for the man.

If you're going to sit with a man, sit with the man. But if you're not, turn that thought off. And I had trouble turning it off. I had trouble turning off negative thoughts.

I'll give you a lot more examples. And as I look back over my life and say, what has been the nature of the transformation that I've experienced? I mean, a lot of this is just the direct growth and empowerment of the Holy Spirit because Holy Spirit brings peace and joy.

It's a fruit. But in terms of what has actually changed my thought life, I realize it has been a growing depth perception and appreciation of the radical grace of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because the more that you see at the center of the gospel and at the center of your life is that you have received the gift of God that you did not deserve. The more that you see that, the more grateful you become. This is why any form of legalism will never produce gratitude.

If you accomplish something that you set your mind on and you reach your goal and you get a reward, that's gratifying. That's satisfying in its own way, but it does not produce gratitude. If you purchase something with your money and then you get it, you may be satisfied, but you're not spilling over with thanksgiving. You don't go to the car dealership and write the check and then fall down on your knees in the salesman's cubicle and say, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you for this car.

You walk out and you say, well, I think I got a fair enough deal. And you enjoy your car, but it's not gratitude. But the life that gets centered around the gospel that says that God came and died in your place so that instead of experiencing alienation from God now and forever, you have been adopted as His own. The thought of that produces gratitude. The scriptures are simply replete with the exhortation to be grateful. 1 Chronicles 16, 8, oh, give thanks to the Lord and call upon His name and make known as deeds among the people. Psalm 7 verse 17, I will give thanks to the Lord due to His righteousness and sing praise to the name of the Lord. Psalm 9, 1, I'll give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. Psalm 30 verse 4, sing praises to the Lord, oh, you saints and give thanks to His holy name.

In fact, we could spend the whole morning just in the Psalter. Psalm 33, Psalm 44, Psalm 54, Psalm 57, 75, 79, 86, 92, 97, 100, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 118, 122, and 136 by my reading, all in one way or another say, give thanks to the Lord. And when Paul himself begins to speak of this, he is very direct. Ephesians 5, 20, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Colossians 3, he says similarly, verse 17, whatever you do, whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. And in 1 Thessalonians 5, 18, he's as clear and succinct as he is in any epistle when he says, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do you want to know what the will of God is for your life? It is to give thanks in every circumstance. This is what God wants. This is what God desires.

This is how God has designed you. So when you look at it in that context, it's not surprising that when we come to Philippians 4, that Paul's language throughout this text is in the superlative. It is in the extreme. It is in the notion of the totality of things, right? Verse 4, rejoice in the Lord always. Verse 5, let your reasonableness be known to everyone. Verse 6, do not be anxious about anything.

Verse 6, end everything with thanksgiving. Verse 7, peace of God, which surpasses all understanding. Verse 8, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever.

He's saying anything that you can think of, anything that fits the category of virtue that He's describing. And verse 8, He says, if there's any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things. He is saying every facet of your life, it's God's will for you to find something to be thankful for.

Whether you have a lot or whether you have a little, whatever it is that you face, you can train yourself to be a grateful person. You can be like the woman who had very little means, and sometimes her cupboard was bare, but she loved the Lord, and she just was thanking Jesus all the time. She'd be out in the morning in the front yard, and she'd be praising Jesus, and I just want to thank you for the beautiful day, Lord, and I just want to thank you that I'm alive today, and I just want to thank you for your many, many blessings. Oh, thank you, Jesus. Well, her neighbor was an atheist, and it was quite bothersome to him, all of this thanking Jesus, when he was like, she is so duped. She just thinks that God's in all this, and that's not. And so one day he knew that her cupboard was bare, and he decided to try to do a good deed and prove a point.

So he went to the grocery store and bought some bags of groceries and came over and put it on her front porch and then hid. And sure enough, she came out, and she saw food out there, and she said, oh, thank you, Jesus. Oh, thank you, Jesus. I am so thankful, Lord. Look at all this food you've brought to me.

Oh, what a blessing. And he jumped out from behind a bush and said, aha, I got you. He said, God didn't bring you those groceries.

I did. I went to the grocery store, and I brought them over here, and I put them on your porch. And she turned her face heavenward, and she said, oh, thank you, Jesus.

Thank you all the more. Not only did you bring me this food, but you made the devil pay for it. You can, Paul says, put these things into practice.

You can train yourself in this. Why does God care so much about it? Well, partly he's a father, and I'll just tell you as a parent, we like our children to be grateful. It was a very, very, very, very important thing in our household.

I would say, if you just go look at our household, you'd say, well, this must have been a major priority. We don't whine, and we're grateful. I just felt like we're the most blessed people in the whole world. We've got so much. We've got so much to be thankful for, so we're not going to whine, and we're going to be thankful. But have you noticed, parents, that children don't come into the world thankful. So you have to train them in it.

And it takes years. It is so funny because we'd be like, take them out for ice cream, and everybody enjoy their ice cream, and we get done. We're riding home. I said, would y'all enjoy your ice cream? Yeah, that was good. Okay, well, what do you say? Oh yeah, thank you.

How many times we did that. Everybody have a good time on the trip, the big vacation? Was that good?

Yeah, it was great. Well, what do you say? Oh yeah, thank you.

You know what's weird about it? Is that even when you make your child say it, and they say it like this, thank you, it still feels pretty good. I think God feels good even though He makes us say thank you to Him. But beloved, the reason that we see over and over in Scripture, and the reason that we see over and over in Philippians 4, and the reason that Paul is so direct about this, about a life of gratitude, is that it's not ultimately just for God's benefit as your Father, and His heart to be warmed as you worship Him, it's for you.

Alan Wright. And I've done a lot of studying of gratitude, and it really is a wonderful, wonderful tool. And it's Conquering Worry, and that's our teaching today, how gratitude conquers worry in our series, No Worries. Alan is back in the studio in just a moment, sharing a parting good news thought for the day.

Stick with us. Can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly? Envision it. Being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection. If you mess up, people don't roll their eyes, make fun of you, or love you less. In his highly acclaimed book, Free Yourself, Be Yourself, Pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame, he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul. Discover freedom, joy, and destiny as you shed performance-based living, and let God take the shame off you for good. It's a life-changing, full-length book from Alan Wright.

Free yourself, be yourself. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860, or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan, as we're back here in the studio, how gratitude conquers worry is the teaching, and that's a wonderful, if I could use the word, tool or weapon to conquer worry. Exactly. I think and hope that our listeners have learned throughout our series that instead of trying to manage your worries, we've developed different biblical strategies that are about getting at the roots of it. And so here's another example where instead of saying, I'm not going to worry, I'm not going to worry, I'm just going to try harder not to worry, you can practice an attitude of gratitude. And we're learning some today and actually tomorrow in this message about the amazing new research on what's called neuroplasticity, the capacity that God put into our brain to actually for our brains to grow and develop. And let's not forget, Daniel, what the radio listener can't see is that I began this sermon by juggling on stage. Not for real long. But the reason was that I had read an article that said that those that learn to juggle, the gray matter of their brain grows a bit. And I thought, well, I don't have anything to do to get my brain to grow. But what we're really saying is that you can put into place practices of thought that will actually change the way you think from now on.