Spiritual Discernment [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. You have a good and gracious Father. He sees what you're going through. He knows the journey you're on. He knows the problems you're facing. He knows the fights that have broken out around you. He knows where you're confused. He knows the things you're nervous about.

And He's with you. 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 Higher Power as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout our entire program today, 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 today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860.

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. Are you ready for some good news?

Yes. You know, life brings with it so many choices. And sometimes it's not readily apparent what's good and what's bad, what's right and what's wrong.

And that, in order to know, requires discernment. And God is utterly and completely for you being on the right path. You, in Christ, the Bible says, are given the mind of Christ. You're given leadership from the Holy Spirit. And so you're not alone in discerning your way and life. We've been in a whole series this fall on the power of the Holy Spirit and how we can walk in the power of the Spirit.

And I want to talk to you about this part of life in the Spirit, spiritual discernment. You have, in the Holy Spirit, an ever-increasing ability to hear from Him about the right direction and about right and wrong. And we take it today from the picture of Joseph in the familiar Christmas story. And I simply want to draw your attention to how easily Joseph could have completely missed it.

But for the leadings and promptings of the Lord. In Matthew, chapter 1, verse 18, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She'll bear a son, and she'll call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Jesus. And bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from his sleep, as he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, he took his wife, but knew her not until she'd given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. And then we jump to chapter 2, after some time has passed, and the Magi have visited verse 13, Matthew 2. When they departed, the Magi had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, and said, rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him. And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod.

This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet out of Egypt, I've called my son. Some years ago, we were riding on a rural road, I think it was on that back way to the beach. Kids were younger, everybody in the car, and we're on a rural road, and there's a little bit slower moving vehicle. I mean, he's still going 50 miles an hour, but I'm thinking I'm gonna pass him.

And the pickup truck, and he had his, the back of it was loaded up with some big furniture pieces, maybe a couch, a couple big chairs or something there, you know. I'm kind of inching up, like, you know, I am a pretty defensive driver, so I stay behind people, but if you're gonna pass somebody, you gotta get up near them and then go around them. So I'm inching up near them. And as we're getting kind of near, my wife, who has a tremendous amount of discernment about things, she said, you don't think that couch, one of the big chairs, is gonna fly off that truck, do you?

And I'm like, well, no, you know. And I'm kind of inching up, and then something inside me said, sometimes she gets little things from the Lord like this, and I backed up, which is a hard thing for a man to do when he's about to pass a vehicle, to give up on it and say, I'll just drive slowly behind the man. So I backed up far behind him, and within about two minutes of that, a huge piece of furniture came flying off the back of his pickup truck. It would have been a terrible wreck right into us. Instead, I easily dodged the furniture.

Nobody was hurt. You've had things like that, haven't you? The Holy Spirit knows these things that are gonna happen. And not only that, but the Holy Spirit knows the reality of a situation. I think so much of discernment is about seeing accurately. It is to see as Jesus sees.

It's to see the reality because we are so limited in our perspectives that we need God. So another instance, writing, I don't know why my story's all about riding down the road, but this, I'm riding down the road about three years ago, and I'm in the left-hand lane. I'm on 74, and it's two lanes. I'm in the left-hand lane. Traffic in the right is moving slower. And I'm proceeding on down, and a tractor trailer truck, 18-wheeler, puts his blinker on and starts acting like he's gonna move right in front of me in my lane. And as far as I know, he didn't have anybody in front of him, and I'm like, why would he pull over in front of me and slow me down? It's amazing when you're driving a car how you feel like you can just judge everybody out there and know everything going on with it. And so I'm frustrated, and I throw my hand up like this, not a gesture, just a hand.

I don't gesture. And I'm frustrated, and he comes on into my lane, slowing me down, you know. And then I felt bad because I realized that there was a slow-moving vehicle in front of him. And he had a big reason why he was trying to get over, because he was really being slowed down.

Truckers are on schedule. Well, I was kind of embarrassed about it then. I knew he'd seen my hand go up, and he dutifully, after he passed the vehicle on the right, went back in the right-hand lane, and I'm like, okay, I gotta go buy him now, you know. And I just didn't want that look from him.

I didn't know it wasn't him. So I just inched on by him, you know, just looking straight ahead. And as I got in front of him, I would just, this is when I wish that my license plate did not read grace to you.

But it does. And so I get back up in front. We move on down the road, about three miles down the road, about three miles down the road, and now I'm in the right-hand lane, and I've gotten into slow traffic and want to get over to the left. There's a lot of traffic.

And I'm thinking about getting over to the left. I put my blinker on and look in my rear view, and guess who is over in the left-hand lane? That truck. And all of a sudden, I hear him just land on that horn. To hear the rest of this story, you gotta stay awake for the rest of this sermon.

I'm coming back to it. But the point of that is, he's on the horn. And what is he saying to me in that horn? You don't really know, do you? We're talking about the importance of spiritual discernment. And I don't have so much for you a line-by-line exposition of this Matthew story, as much as to give you this picture of God being totally for his people, going the right way.

All of the Christmas narratives have angels showing up, and God appearing in dreams, and prophecies that are spoken, and revelations that come about, and shepherds that are sent, and magi that come, all validating this is the path, this is the path walking it. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Would you love a better marriage? You don't need more good advice.

You need more good news. Marriages like people aren't changed by human effort, or even by applying principles. Marriages are changed by the gospel of grace. In six video sessions, Pastor Alan and his wife, Ann, lead you and your spouse into a fresh encounter with the God of grace. You'll learn a simple grace-filled process that makes great communication easy. You'll discover the freedom of forgiveness and the power of celebration. You'll also learn how to pray for your spouse and how to bless one another with a faith-filled vision for the future.

To help you grow, when you order the video series, we'll also send you two copies of the accompanying study guide. Whether your marriage is going through some special challenges or your marriage is in a season of health, you'll find powerful, transformational truth in good news for your marriage. Make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today and fill your marriage with the grace of God. 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 we are in our final days of offering this special product. 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. So I want to start by saying God's utterly for you. He's completely for you by giving you His Word and by speaking to you through the revelation of all He's already said. You know, most of, let's start with this, most of the discernment that you and I need in life has been given to us in the Word of God. We've got a good brother in the church, the word he got from the Lord was, if God can't bless it, don't do it. He made up little calendars like God can't bless it, don't do it.

That's a good word because like most of what you need to know about the right way and the wrong way has already been shown you. You don't have to pray about should you cheat on your wife, cheat on your taxes, cheat at your business or cheat at anything. You don't have to pray about that. You already know what God believes about that. Most of the stuff and life based stuff is already His Word.

So we start with that. The goodness of God and giving us a revelation of His own heart about the way of life and His Word is a beautiful light and the lamp torches up the way for us, see. He's completely for you in every way by giving you His revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ who said in John 8 12, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have light of life. And Jesus also said in John 10 that He's a good shepherd. And He said the sheep hear His voice. He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out. When He's brought out all His own, He goes before them.

The sheep follow Him for they know His voice. Romans 8, Paul said, all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. It's part of your inheritance to be led by the Spirit of God.

It's part of who you are. Part of what it means to be a follower of Christ is you get to hear from God every day about direction in life. And remember the words of James 1 5, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, it'll be given to him. He didn't want to leave Joseph alone making the wrong decisions.

So I want to start with this, when you think about discernment in the Holy Spirit, remember every day of your life, God is more for you being on the right path than you could ever be for yourself because He's your Father. My baby girl had her first real big girl business trip this week. She's working less than a year for a big international PR firm. She's stationed in Washington, D.C. And she's, you know, low on the totem pole.

First hadn't finished a year yet. But her boss called her up and said she invited her to go and represent the firm on a big thing because her boss couldn't go. And so a big celebrity from a TV show, they were doing all this social media video shooting in Los Angeles, would Abby go and represent the firm for the big shoot and Abby's writing scripts for all this stuff and going out there. She called me up. She said, Dad, I'm going to Los Angeles. I said, that's exciting. She was so giddy.

She was excited about it to be asked to do a big thing. Then the next day she called me up and she said, I'm only 24. Can I rent a car? I said, well, let's check it out in California. You can.

She never rented one. She said, how do you rent a car? I said, well, let me talk to you about it.

I think they've got a shuttle there. Here's how it works. She's like, I got to drive around Los Angeles and entertain our clients and stuff. And I said, well, you're a big girl.

That's what it's all about. You know, she said, can you have your phone on in case I can't figure out how to rent a car or get lost in Los Angeles? I said, baby girl, my phone will be on and I'm here. I was texting her and calling her and interacting with her because I'm her father. And I'm not going to say to her, well, listen, we've all had to get lost in big cities. Just go and do it on your own. Of course not.

If you love your child, you want to help your child onto the right path. She texted me in the middle of the long flight from Washington to LA. And she said, a fight's broken out on the plane and it's chaos. They're going to ground us in Oklahoma city. You might've seen it in the news, her first major flight on a business trip.

And they grounded them in Oklahoma city because a fight and a belligerent man that had to get arrested. And it was all four rows in front of her. And I'm texting back and forth because I'm her father. I'm like, are you okay? What is happening? Tell me you're all right.

Here's what we got. You know, you have a father, you have a good and gracious father. He sees what you're going through. He knows the journey you're on. He knows the problems you're facing. He knows the fights that have broken out around you. He knows where you're confused. He knows the things you're nervous about. And he's with you.

He's for you. You can have spiritual discernment because your father has promised it. The second thing I want you to notice is that the vulnerability of Joseph, he really couldn't have known any more than he did know. And the more that we recognize the weaknesses of our own natural discernment, the more you crave the spiritual discernment.

You've got your own stories of being in situations where you just don't really know what to make of it. Joseph was like that. Interpreters sort of disagree. The dominant view of Joseph is called the suspicion theory and that Joseph was suspicious that Mary had been unfaithful. They were betrothed, but not yet married. A betrothal was much more than an engagement. You had to get a divorce to break a betrothal.

Usually lasted about a year, the betrothal period. And that's the phase they were in. And Mary has conceived a child and this whole story and the suspicion theory says that Joseph says that there's no such thing as that. And, you know, he's just going to be respectful, but he's going to divorce her because Mary has done wrong. But there is another theory and I'm kind of drawn to it that Joseph knew that there was no way in the world that Mary would have been ungodly or unfaithful that she was a holy woman. She was righteous before God and that he believed this was from God and it was too holy to have anything to do with it.

That might be the case, but either way he was going to divorce her. He was going to make the absolute wrong decision. We're vulnerable in our own sensitivities and I think that part of spiritual discernment, well, it begins with knowing you have a father who's for you. So you're not meant to be stumbling in the darkness. Jesus is the light of the world. He's a God of revelation and he wants us to expect it.

But secondly, I think it's important to admit we like Joseph. We like me on the road to wonder what a trucker's doing or any moment or any moment of the day in our own natural minds we're limited. And I think to the extent that you admit that you will begin to yearn more for God's direction in your life. I think it's sort of important to know which personality you are because we can tend to be like discernment because we're too positive or too negative.

It can go either direction. Yeah, it's kind of good. I'm one of those super optimistic people. I just think there's nothing that's a problem. You know, it's going to be all right. Everybody's going to do all right.

And that's not going to be a problem. And my wife's more realistic. And so especially around the house, like if there's something, a noise in the house, she's very keenly aware of it. And I'm like, I don't even hear it. And it just seems like a lot of times these noises happen right when I'm ready to go to bed. And once I'm ready to go to bed, I'm ready to go to bed.

And so this was sometime over some month or two ago and I'm going to go to bed. And she said, I hear water running. I said, I don't hear anything. She said, no, listen, listen, honey, I listen. I don't hear it. She said, come in this room, brought me in a bathroom. Listen, can you hear something running through the pipes? Finally, I just said, okay, I hear it. And she said, we got to figure out what that is. I said, all right, I'll go check.

It's probably just a flapper in a toilet that's, you know, water's running a little bit. I'll check all of them. I went and I checked.

I go, finally. I checked every faucet. Was one of them dripping?

No. There was water coming through the pipes. You could hear it. I didn't know where it was coming from.

I looked all over. I came back to her and I said, honey, I said, I'm tired. I said, I don't see, I don't, nothing's leaking anywhere. And I said, I don't, I don't, I don't see anything. I said, and I just, you know, there's nothing we can do about tonight. I said, so let's go to bed. She just looked at me. Jesus, she gave me this look like, and she said, there is water running in this house with this look like we are not going to bed until we figure out where this is coming from.

And I realized we're not going to bed. And so I then had to go outside in the cold and I found that there was a hose that was connected to a sprinkler that had not been totally shut off. It was drawn water. I was running out through some pipes. You could hear it. I came back in problem solved, but I would have gladly gone to bed with water running in the house somewhere.

As long as I couldn't just see it dripping on me. I was all right. You see Alan Wright, our good news message, spiritual discernment from the series, higher power. Please stay with us. Pastor Alan is back here in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day.

In just a moment. Would you love a better marriage? You don't need more good advice.

You need more good news. Marriages like people aren't changed by human effort or even by applying principles. Marriages are changed by the gospel of grace. In six video sessions, Pastor Alan and his wife and lead you and your spouse into a fresh encounter with the God of grace. You'll learn a simple grace-filled process that makes great communication easy. You'll discover the freedom of forgiveness and the power of celebration. You'll also learn how to pray for your spouse and how to bless one another with a faith-filled vision for the future to help you grow.

When you order the video series, we'll also send you two copies of the accompanying study guide. Whether your marriage is going through some special challenges or your marriage is in a season of health, you'll find powerful transformational truth in good news for your marriage. Make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today and fill your marriage with the grace of God. 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 we are in our final days of offering this special product. 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, pastorallen.org. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at pastorallen.org. Back now in the studio with Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day as we place a bookmark here, spiritual discernment. Pastor Alan, what's our parting thought? Well, let's begin with this in a matter of discerning and understanding truth and understanding God's direction for your life. Beloved, He is more for you than you are for yourself. He is more interested in keeping you on the right path and setting you in the right direction than you even could be yourself. So we're not having to try to twist the arm of a reluctant God who is leaving us in the dark. Instead, the light has come. So the process of becoming more spiritually discerning is something that we can all cultivate. And we're learning from these Christmas stories because this is one of the places where we see discernment and God being committed to bringing revelation to His people. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.