From Unsure to Secure [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Christianity is not that.

It is not a form of religion in which you put together a certain strict daily practice of ritual. What Christianity is, is an experience of being in relationship with Christ, being with Christ. 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, Life of Peter, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire broadcast, 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. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you this special offer available today. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org.

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

Here is Alan Wright. Are you guys ready for some good news? Just as Peter was transformed simply by being with Jesus, you and I have, by the presence of the Holy Spirit, the opportunity to be with Jesus at all times. And likewise, we are being transformed. I want to turn to you today several miracle stories as we continue in our series on Peter. And the first is Mark chapter 5, this remarkable day in the life of Jesus in which you see these two miracles that are clumped together. And then I'm going to show you after that a miracle story through the ministry of Peter that was very, very similar. And following that, a reference that religious leaders made about Peter. And I want to tie all this together for us to see just how beautiful, glorious, and transforming it is simply being with Jesus.

Mark chapter 5. We pick up reading at verse 21. And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him, and he was beside the sea.

He became one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name. And seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live. And he went with him.

Now, in the midst of this, they are in a great crowd. I'm not going to read this text, but in this great crowd where everybody's pressing against him, a woman comes up who's been sick for a long time, and she is healed because she's touched Jesus's garment. And Jesus insists on knowing who it was that touched him. He stops, and he compassionately interacts with this woman, amazed at her faith. And at verse 35, while he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, Your daughter is dead.

Why trouble the teacher any further? But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not fear, only believe. And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John, the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, Why are you making a commotion and weeping?

The child is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed at him, but he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, Talitha kumi, which means little girl, I say to you, arise. And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat.

Let me just pause here before we turn to the next story. It's just interesting, for whatever reasons, this is what Jesus did. He didn't, there was this huge crowd, it was all around him. And this woman had just been healed, who touched his garment. He's getting ready to go and raise this girl from the dead, but he sets everybody away except for Peter and James and John. So here's our Peter, who's getting a front row seat to see the Lord raise a little girl back to life. He goes into the house, only Peter, only James and John are allowed in, along with the mother and the father, to see this great miracle, teaching Peter something.

He's showing him something. Now turn to Acts chapter 9. There are two stories of miracles here that come through the ministry of Peter in Acts chapter 9. There's another story that's highlighted in Acts chapter 4.

We're going to look at some of the afterthought of that. There were many, many miracles after Pentecost that began taking place through the apostles, and especially through Peter, so much so that one text says that people would get near Peter just hoping that his shadow would pass by them because they might get healed. It was just so anointed, it was something that was just extraordinary that was happening.

But here's the story, and what I want you to see is just amazingly how similar this is to the story we just read. This is Acts chapter 9, and it's verse 36. Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which translated means Dorcas.

She was full of good works and acts of charity, and in those days she became ill and died. And when they'd washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, please come to us without delay. So Peter rose and went with him. And when he arrived, they took him to the upper room.

All the widows stood beside him weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all outside and knelt down and prayed. And turning to the body, he said, Tabitha, arise. And what's so interesting on pause here is that even as you see in how this is transliterated here, Tabitha, this really is only one little letter difference from the phrase that Jesus used when he said, Talitha, little girl, arise. But now he's saying, Tabitha, arise, almost the same words that Jesus spoke. And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then calling the saints and the widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

Now, I want to show you one more text, and I'll tie all of this together for you. In Acts chapter 4, another beautiful, we won't take time to read this story, a beautiful miracle story in which there was a lame man who was begging at the gate called Beautiful. And Peter comes and tells him, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I you. And this man is healed.

Well, there's a great uproar about the healing that's taken place. And the religious leaders actually arrested Peter and held him overnight. And they were bringing them before the council to answer about this. And I pick up reading Acts chapter 4, verse 5.

On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, all who are of the high priestly family. And when they set them in their midst, they inquired, by what power or by what name did you do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Now when they saw, this is what I want to focus on, verse 13, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. I had planned to just speak more about the healing ministry of Jesus and of Peter and the healing ministry in the body of Christ, but I was arrested by that one little verse that the religious leaders in their inquiry, perhaps they just meant, oh, it suddenly dawned on them. This was Peter was one of the ones who had been firsthand with Jesus. But when I read it, it touches something deeper within me that when they saw Peter's boldness and yet they saw he was just a common man, he wasn't educated, something about all of this, it reminded them of Jesus. He'd been with Jesus. And so whatever ministry was taking place in Peter's life, it had been the fruit of him having been with Jesus.

And that's what I want to talk to you about. I want to talk to you about how being with Jesus is so transforming. I was reading some of author and musician Michael Card's book on the life of Peter, a beautiful book, and he was reflecting how when he was in a monastery, a Russian Orthodox monastery in Romania, he saw a painting that had two figures that were holding up a church building. And the more he looked at it, it was clear they were representative of Paul and Peter. And he saw that there was Paul, who's usually represented as a bald man, but fiery and bold, and he's got a book because he's written most of the New Testament. And then there was Peter. One of the reflections that Michael Card had about Peter, he said, That's a fitting description of this complex man Peter, who is like shifting sand but is called a rock, who is the one who vows that he will never leave Jesus and really means it from the depth of his heart, and yet he's the one who denies Jesus three times. So you're always asking the question, who really is Peter? Is he this unstable, unpredictable, impetuous, and unreliable man, or is he the rock upon which God is building his church?

Who is Peter? And the real answer to that question is that Peter is the rock, but what we're seeing is the transformation process by which he is becoming what he was destined to be. So really in studying the life of Peter, what we're really studying is how transformation takes place in our lives. And transformation for the Christian's life takes place as we are with Jesus.

In the first place, transformation by being with Jesus takes place because if you are with Jesus, what we're saying is that you are experiencing Christ himself. And I can't think of anything more important to say over and over and over except that, beloved, Christianity is not mental assent to doctrinal truths, although they're important doctrinal truths, and getting our theology correct is absolutely essential. But Christianity is not that.

It is not a form of religion in which you put together a certain strict daily practice of ritual. What Christianity is is an experience of being in relationship with Christ, being with Christ. When I was in college, as I've mentioned a number of times before, I went through a time of intellectual, I would say, crisis. The faith that I had enjoyed since I was really in fourth grade that had seemed very dear to my heart and very real to me went through a rigor of intellectual skepticism in college that made me to feel a tremendous sense of oppression even to the point I began to lose some sleep. I was wondering if everything that I'd ever really believed was just because my mother had believed it or others around me had believed it and how could it be that it just so happens I'm growing up in a Christian environment, what if I hadn't grown up? All of these questions, all these intellectual questions, so many go through this kind of journey. And what it did for me was in the midst of all of that sense of oppressive, mental, intellectual sort of anguish, at the same time that I was experiencing some of the worst doubts I'd ever experienced, I was also saying to God, if this is all real, I need to know that it's real.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Ever feel like the pressure's always on? Do you find it hard to say no, worried that you'll disappoint someone? The Bible tells us only one thing about Adam and Eve's relationship in paradise. They were naked and felt no shame. But as soon as sin entered the world, they became anxious, plagued with a gnawing question, what must I do to be accepted? There is only one solution, the grace of God that lifts our shame. In a new six-week video masterclass, Pastor Alan exposes the dynamics of shame and shows the path to freedom, whether as an individual or in a small group, the video series is sure to bring healing and hope. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month, we'll send you the digital masterclass videos and study guides as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

In a world so quick to say shame on you, it's time to let God's grace take the shame off you. 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. What I was asking was to experience firsthand the presence of Jesus. And the hunger and the thirst that I had at that time, I'm convinced, is what God used to lead me into a transforming experience of His presence.

And you might call it many different names. I was already a Christian. I already had the Holy Spirit. But you might call it an immersion in the Spirit. You might call it a baptism.

You might call it a release. You might call it an encounter with God. You might call it experiencing the power of God for the first time.

You might call it knowing in your heart what you've known in your head. Whatever you call it, there is in the Christian life an opportunity to actually be with Jesus in a way that you know Him and you can talk about Jesus the way you would talk about any other friend because you have actually spent time with Him. And when these religious leaders saw Peter, what they said was they recognized he'd been with Jesus. And it's so interesting to watch how Peter's life just in front of our eyes as we watch the gospel be unveiled, how his life is being transformed. It might be in sort of fits and starts. It might be like he's growing and then, oh, he's down. You know, who amongst us hadn't been on that kind of roller coaster spiritually?

But it's moving towards this place because he's been with Him. On the day that we read about in Mark chapter 5 where Peter gets to see these miracles, there's so much Peter must have learned on that day. I mean, you could just go through a mental checklist. He goes, what are all the things that he learned about Jesus that day? Well, he learned that great crowds were always around Jesus.

Jesus is popular, check. He learned that Jesus had compassion upon the six. Jesus is compassionate, write it down. He learned that Jesus cared about women, which was unusual in that culture where women were not very honored. And he stopped, both these miracle stories were about women.

Okay, learn that about them. He learned that Jesus loved faith. He loved in the woman's faith, that touch is gone. I mean, you could just go through and start writing down all this list of things like if Peter were taking notes on what he was learning from Jesus. But do you think that's the way he actually was learning that day?

No, it wasn't that. It was that he was just being with Jesus. And then Jesus is gonna heal this little girl, raise her from the dead. And he invites Peter and John, just, I want you to come in.

I want you to just come and see this. Come and experience, come and learn by simply being with him. So there's a process in which when you're with Jesus, your faith is not something that's just intellectual.

It's something that is experiential. Now here's the second thing that's so important about being with Jesus is that when you are with someone, not just Jesus, but just anyone, whoever it is that you're spending a lot of time with, you become more like them. And there's almost a mystical quality to this, not just in our relationship with God, but almost with other people.

One self-help author has famously declared that you are the sum or the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that we are amazingly, we amazingly become more and more like those that we spend so much time with. This is no more apparent than in marriage. Those of us that have been married for a long time, it's just crazy how you just, I mean, it's weird, it's just weird.

Some of you old married folks, can you attest to this too? It's like Anne and I will be riding down the road and just be quiet for a long time. And then we both open our mouth at exactly the same moment to say something. Nobody said anything for the last 20 minutes. And all of a sudden we open our mouth to say something and we bring up the same subject.

I mean, this is kind of scary. I told you, I think that some years ago in the middle of the night, I mean like 3 a.m. in the dead middle of the night, for whatever reason, Anne and I both woke up at exactly the same moment, that half waking up just to reposition ourselves in bed. And we both woke up exact same moment.

What are the chances of this? Turned towards the center of the bed and clashed each other's heads right in the middle of the night. We couldn't sleep for an hour after that for laughing. I'm like, what are the chances of headbutting my wife in the middle of the night?

I want a sitting position. What made us get up at the same time? There's just something that begins to happen where you almost like are thinking like each other and you become like each other. It's an extraordinary thing how this happens. Isn't it weird? I don't know why this dawned on me this week, but my dad was a bit of an artist and a cartoonist and he had drawn a little cartoon mouse that became a little character in their Grimsley High School yearbook in Greensboro. He drew the pictures that were in his high school yearbook. I don't know why this dawned on me, but I was always a little tinkering with art and little cartoons and different things. And I drew the picture for my junior high yearbook and I was asked to do that.

I never even thought about it. You don't realize the ways that you're being like somebody because you don't think about it that much. I'm talking about the ways you become like somebody. You haven't even thought about it, but you're becoming like them.

And there's a way in which what you see in Jesus, you see in Peter because he's just been with him. To make more sense of this, just think about how you talk, for example. This is unusual. Of course, here in the South, I think everybody ought to talk like we do. And then people come to the South who aren't from the South and they think we talk funny. And things that they don't understand. And some of y'all, I need to explain a few things to. Y'all can refer to, it's the second person plural, but it doesn't necessarily refer to an entire group. And that's why sometimes we have to say all y'all. See, people get confused by this. It's like if I said to this side of the room, now y'all say hallelujah and y'all say praise the Lord, but all y'all say amen.

So you need to be able to get these nuances right. I was talking one time to a waitress at a little breakfast joint down at the beach and she was just as cute as could be, so Southern. And she talked about how much fun she had with Northerners coming down to the beach. And she said, one time a man said, what is a grit? And I loved her response. She just said, honey, they don't come alone. Alan Wright.

That's some good Southern humor for you right there. From unsure to secure is today's teaching and the life of Peter is what we're learning about now. Hey, Alan's back here in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. Ever feel like the pressure's always on?

Do you find it hard to say no, worried that you'll disappoint someone? The Bible tells us only one thing about Adam and Eve's relationship in paradise. They were naked and felt no shame. But as soon as sin entered the world, they became anxious, plagued with a gnawing question. What must I do to be accepted? There is only one solution, the grace of God that lifts our shame. In a new six-week video masterclass, Pastor Alan exposes the dynamics of shame and shows the path to freedom. Whether as an individual or in a small group, the video series is sure to bring healing and hope. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month, we'll send you the digital masterclass videos and study guides as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

In a world so quick to say shame on you, it's time to let God's grace take the shame off you. 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. Alan, I love the bookmark we put there, but really this is more than just humor. This is really something that we can dig into and say there is a profound difference in our lives when we realize that we are secure in Christ. And when we look at the life of Peter, we see one that, as we've said before, we could be frustrated by this guy. And really that's all of our lives, right? We are on shifting sand.

We are unsure until we find we can latch on securely to the Father. Well, we're learning so much from the fact that Jesus blessed Peter, believed in Peter, because Jesus had ultimate faith for Peter's life. And so the life of Peter is so close to our own hearts, Daniel, because Peter is a guy who is as unsure about everything as anybody could be. And moves into being this person who is so absolutely secure in who he is in Christ. And I just believe God is at work and every listener right now opens up his or her heart to hear the blessing of God move you also from being unsure, lacking confidence, to really coming to a place of security in Christ. It's God's work in us, but he's doing it. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.