How Gratitude Conquers Worry [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. He said when he announced that the Kingdom is at hand, and he told his disciples, this is the message to go tell people, he said, tell them, repent. And the word repent in Greek is to change your mind.

Change your mind. God's glory and goodness and grace is here. It'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 Rinaldo 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 and 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. There's a connection between giving thanks to God and a peace that passes understanding. I tend to always have thought in my Christian life that you get the joy of the Holy Spirit and then your mind can start thinking about peaceful things and that happens. But what Paul is saying here is that you can choose to set your mind on the things that you're thankful for and it will welcome in the peace of the Lord. That something you can think about will lead to something you can't think about. That something that you can think about will lead to that which surpasses understanding. We're talking about heart and mind and spirit and soul and the mysteries of God's grace. I got lost in reading some this week about what scientists call neuroplasticity, that the brain is not so hardwired after all that it changes.

Used to be scientists thought the brain kind of was hardwired after a few years of life and that's kind of what you got and you could stuff some more information in there but what we're realizing is that the brain can adapt. The sea gypsies or the Moken people are a seafaring people who spend a great deal of their time in boats and underwater off the coast of Thailand. And they have, scientists have found, exceptional underwater vision twice as good as normal people. And so they're able to gather shellfish at great depths without the aid of scuba gear.

How do the Moken do this? It's because they constrict their pupils 22% which they say how can they do that? And the science has confirmed their brains have changed.

It's interesting. Some years ago a famous study about London taxi drivers who through images of their brains were compared to bus drivers in London. And I suppose before they had the GPS and all that, this was a little bit older study maybe, but they required the taxi drivers to memorize the street maps of London.

And they would constantly every day having to be thinking about how they get to this place and this place and the best route, whereas bus drivers just drive the same route. And what they found was that a cab driver's hippocampus, the part of the brain that deals, I think, with spatial representation is measurably larger in the taxi driver's brain than it is in the bus driver's brain. Your brain gets better at what it does a lot. If you seek to play a musical instrument and you wonder, well, how is it you get better at it? Your brain's getting better at it. The studies show if you would take up a musical instrument, then your brain's going to grow. It means that the very real sense, your brain doesn't have to stay the way it is.

It can get better at something. And so this means that if you are one who worries a lot, your brain will become very good at worrying. But if you're someone who gives thanks a lot, your brain will get good at giving thanks.

The thing that's so diabolical is that to him who has much, more is given. And this is God's principle, but it's used diabolically when we're in the negative, because when you have negative thoughts, you just get more negative thoughts. And it's why discouraged people and depressed people often do what psychologists call dampening of positive experiences.

I used to do some of this. Something positive has happened, but if you're really discouraged, your mind starts going, well, I'm sure this won't last very long. The other shoe is going to drop.

My good fortune is going to change. But the people who regularly are thinking about what they're grateful for and looking in that direction don't dampen the positive thing, but it gets magnified. It's very fascinating this brain science. Dr. Dennis Charney, who's the Dean of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine studied brain changes in POWs who had experienced solitary confinement. It's hard to imagine being confined for a long period of time alone where all they could do is think. But the ones who survived emotionally and mentally, he discovered, were ones who actively use their brains all day throughout maybe even years of solitary confinement. Reference, for example, one man who was a builder and what he did was every day in his mind, he built a house room by room, stick by stick, brick by brick.

And when he came home, he built that house without any drawings. Another person that he had interviewed discovered that this man had just started multiplying numbers in his mind all the time and he developed the capacity to multiply triple digit numbers by triple digit numbers. Another man started accessing parts of his memory that he'd long forgotten.

And so for example, began remembering and had the capacity to remember all of the names of the people in his kindergarten class. The brain we're realizing is able to be rewired and it adapts and not just that, but it grows. So back to my juggling, I read an ABC news article that referenced a study that said that they took two groups of people in one group, they gave us some instructions on learning to juggle and gave them three months to learn how to juggle and the other group didn't learn to juggle. And what they discovered at the end of it was that those who learned to juggle over a three month period demonstrated, I'm reading a quote from the study, an increase in gray matter in two areas of the brain involved in visual and motor activity, the mid temporal area and the posterior intraparietal sulcus.

I didn't even know I had an intraparietal sulcus. But when I juggle, it's getting bigger. Right now, my brain is growing right now.

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 to 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.

It might be that prophetically Paul saw into things that science hadn't discovered yet, of course, but maybe Romans 12, one and two is more literal than we realize. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. To say, God, I am so grateful to you. My whole life is shaped by an awareness of your benevolence, and so I surrender every part of my being to you. This is my worship. I give thanks to you. I praise you.

I worship you. And this is linked to verse two where Paul says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that your mind is being changed. He might be saying without realizing how prophetic it is that when you give God thanks, your brain is changing. That by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. He is saying that the more you worship and you give God thanks, the more your mind takes on the capacity to see everything else that is good and lovely and wonderful. That if you think on what's true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable and excellent and praiseworthy, that your brain is going to get better and better at thinking on those things.

That you're not stuck with where you are now and the way you think. In fact, isn't this what Jesus said? He said when he announced that the kingdom is at hand and he told his disciples, this is the message to go tell people. He said, tell them, repent. And the word repent in Greek is to change your mind.

Change your mind. God's glory and goodness and grace is here. Our flesh struggles with this because we'd like to have a peace with understanding. We all know what that means, that I'd like to get all of my life circumstances set just right so I don't have to worry about anything. And you get little moments like this, you know, everybody you love is healthy, you got enough money in the bank account, got food on the table, job is secure, life seems good, weather's doing well. It just, that's not much of life though, is it?

No, if you love a lot of people, somebody's in trouble. If you're a human being, you're going to walk through some storms and it's just, we're not going to have much peace if we're looking for peace with understanding. And the fact of the matter is even when you have that, I'm talking about circumstantial peace, you're also worried about when is that going to change? So the story of the scriptures about people that God wants to have peace with, it surpasses understanding but they struggle. Abraham and Sarah, they struggled. They were promised a son, the son didn't come so they got Hagar to come in and be a surrogate, a maidservant to come be a surrogate. And they went out with Ishmael and it messed up their lives.

We're trying to help things along. The spies that go into Canaan and they spy out the land, 10 of them come back with a negative report because they say, we have no peace about this by our own understanding when we look at the giants in the land. And all along the scripture, God's like, I want you to have a peace that transcends what you can see with your eyes. Jesus came and He said directly in John 14, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. He's talking about something that transcends. The world wants to give peace with understanding is I'm giving you a peace that surpasses your understanding. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. The way that you use your understanding to give thanks can lead you into a peace that is beyond your understanding.

Wow. And what this means is not just for the believer's life that there is no worry, but where there is no worry, you know what is close at hand? Joy. Joy. Brene Brown, who's done such a excellent research on shame and vulnerability. And she's also this Houston researcher has researched gratitude. She writes, the relationship between joy and gratitude is one of the most important things I've found in my research.

I wasn't expecting it. In my 12 years of research on 11,000 pieces of data, I did not interview, listen to this, I did not interview one person who described themselves as joyful, who also did not actively practice gratitude, actively practice gratitude. For me, she writes, it was very counterintuitive because I went into the research thinking that the relationship between joy and gratitude was, if you're joyful, then you should be grateful.

But she said, that's not what I found at all. Instead, practicing gratitude invites joy into our lives. See, the most beautiful word, I think, maybe in the New Testament, is charis. Charis means grace.

It means literally gift. Charis is the unmerited favor of God. Charis is the notion that though we deserve nothing but God's displeasure, that we deserve nothing but banishment for our sin, though we deserve nothing but punishment. Instead, God has come benevolently to us in the person of Jesus Christ so that the gospel says clearly that when you accept by simple childlike faith that Jesus died for you, that what you're saying is that all the punishment that was due me has been taken by Jesus, and you're saying that God loves you so much that He has defined justice and executed justice through the cross and therefore left Himself propitious towards you, wherein He gives to you the reward that only Jesus should have merited. That's grace, amazing grace.

How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Charis. And what I want you to see is that the Greek word forgive thanks that Paul uses in Philippians 4 and that we see throughout the New Testament is a word that has grace in the middle of it. Charis is in the middle of the word for giving thanks, eukaris Deo. Charis is essential if you're going to be thankful. As I've been saying, if you are entitled to something, you may be gratified or satisfied if you get it, but you're not thankful. Only if you get grace, will you ever be thankful. So the way to be thankful is to think much of the grace of God, and you give Him thanks for His grace, for all the things that you could have never done for yourself, including giving birth to your own life or your spiritual birth. And the word for joy is a derivative from the same root of charis.

The word is chara. And chara, the joy of the Lord comes when you are grateful. So grace and gratitude and joy are inextricably linked. All this is to say, you know who the happiest people are in the world? The most grateful. And you know who the most grateful people in the world are? The ones who understand grace. That's it.

It's that simple. Years ago, my brother and I were playing a round of golf and we linked up with a third who was a stranger to us, a man who was playing the round with us, and we've just met him. And he was maybe the happiest person I'd ever seen, which was very interesting because he was, at the same time, maybe the worst golfer I'd ever played with.

I had a few struggles on the golf course that day, hit a few bad shots and it felt frustrating to me. But y'all, he was shanking it into every forest you could find. If there was even a small creek, he topped the ball into the water. He hit it in every lake, every creek, passed every out-of-bounds stake. He looked for balls, lost balls, quit looking for them.

We're tired of looking for his golf balls. And the whole time he was whistling and happy. You'd have thought the man was shooting five under par.

It was terrible. And my brother finally found a way to discreetly say to him, you know, you sure are happy. And I imagine this might not be your best round of golf, you know, or something tactful like that. I don't think he said, how can you be happy as horrible a golfer as you are?

But it was the intent of the question. And the man said, oh yeah, I'm happy. He said, you see, I just came from the doctor's office. He said, they thought it was malignant and maybe even late stage, but the biopsy came back and it's all benign. He said, I don't even need any treatment.

And he just shanked another ball in the woods and whistled. Because the happiest people in the world are not the ones that are hitting the best shots. They're the ones that are the most grateful. And the most grateful people are the ones that know that I was dead, but now I've been made alive. When you think much of the goodness of God and give him thanks, you will change your mind and become really good at gratitude. And the people that are really good at gratitude have no worries. And that's the gospel.

Alan Wright. And we're placing the conclusion here to our series, No Worries. And the final moments here of this teaching, How Gratitude Conquers Worry. Alan is back for one final thought in this here in the studio, joining us in just a moment.

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 earlier in this series, we talked about how it's probably the most simplistic message, but yet the most comprehensive thing that's trying to understand is, hey, just don't worry. Just don't worry.

And the scripture is pretty clear on that, but a lot of practicality throughout this series. What's your closing thought as we finalize this? Well, it's so difficult to come to the end of a series like this, Daniel, and not want to just keep going and going because it's so important. Our culture is an anxious culture. And it seems that our lives are more and more anxious. And we've learned so many things. We've learned that shame is at the heart of a lot of our anxiety. We have learned that we can have our imaginations sanctified by God.

So that instead of saying what if and fill it in with negative things, we can say what if and fill it in with positive possibilities. We have discovered that the world is not getting worse as people always say. So many things are actually getting better and God's on his throne. We have seen over and over great hope, but there's no more fitting way to end than this, the joy of the Lord. And the word for gratitude in Greek is directly related to the word for grace. And that word is directly related to joy, grace. What God's done for us is the root of our gratitude. And that gratitude causes us joy.

So maybe we just leave the listener with this thought. Celebrate the gospel. Think much of what Jesus has done for you. Give him thanks and worship him. And as you do, let the joy come in your heart that displaces the worry that would want to choke us out. You can live a life of no worries. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.